NAMBLEX 2002 - Campaign Overview
The Campaign Overview
In the Summer of 2002 more than fifty scientists from ten UK
Universities
descended upon Mace Head, Connemara, Ireland, equipped with
the latest
state-of-the-art instrumentation, developed using NERC and
JIF funding.
Their mission was to make the most detailed measurements ever of
the chemical
composition, both in the gas and aerosol phases, of
predominantly clean air
reaching the site from the Atlantic, in order to test the
predictions of
models of atmospheric chemistry. The project, funded by NERC
and known as
NAMBLEX (North Atlantic Marine Boundary Layer Experiment), involved
Chemists, Physicists and Meteorologists, and will help us
understand better
the chemical mechanisms that control the concentrations of greenhouse
gases, radiatively-active aerosols and gases responsible for the
deterioration of air quality, for example, ozone.
Participating Institutions were the Universities of Leeds, York, East Anglia, Leicester, Birmingham, Bristol, Edinburgh, UMIST, Lancaster and Cambridge.
Campaign objectives were:
- To test quantitatively our basic understanding of oxidation processes in clean and moderately
polluted air using observed correlations and comparisons of measured and model-predicted behaviour.
- To study extensively the chemistry of halogen species in the marine boundary layer through observation
of reactive intermediates and their sources and sinks.
- A study of the reactive nitrogen budget over the Atlantic Ocean.
- To examine the origins and role of reactive hydrocarbons in the MBL, and carbon budget
reconciliation using comprehensive chromatography.
- To investigate the size-distributed composition, internal mixing and Cloud Condensation Nucleus
(CCN) activity of aerosols and the processes involved in new particle creation.