Written by: Raquel González Armas and Hugo de Boer At six in the morning the first rays of sunlight reach the tops of the tallest trees of the Amazon jungle. This first light gives the canopy trees a signal to open their stomata and start an intensive day of photosynthesis…
This blog was written by Martin Janssens and Oscar Hartogensis We have now spent two weeks in the fantastic care of the ATTO community. We have received help from co-researchers, camp staff, senior officials and technicians at every turn of the project. We are extremely grateful. Therefore, we are very…
We opened this series of blogs by asking “does the rainforest talk to the clouds?” The post “I want one” puts us in a good position to understand how we measure this: through the turbulent exchange of heat and moisture between the rainforest canopy and the overlying atmosphere, captured e.g….
Will it rain? When? How deep is the cloud? Will it grow deeper? How much? A lot of questions without answers. But the soundings observing meteorological variables can provide us some quantification. So far what we have experienced during the CloudRoots campaign at the Amazonia are clear mornings. After lunch,…
I want one! This was the enthusiastic reaction of a Brazilian student after her first encounter with a scintillometer at the CloudRoots campaign in Amazonia. The scintillometer is indeed a special instrument that deserves admiration. It measures the turbulent transports of heat, water vapour and CO2 through the atmosphere over…
Written by: Professor Thomas Roeckmann from IMAU (Utrecht University) The key facilities at the ATTO camp are a sleeping building, a kitchen and a building with bathrooms and showers. Except for the bathrooms, none of the buildings have side walls, but the walls are half open. They are covered with…
Written by: David Bonell (Thenician IMAU, Utrecht University) A troop of howling monkeys wakes the ATTO camp up just in time for breakfast at 5:45 AM. Ham, cheese, eggs, and a colorful line-up of tropical fruits invitingly await on the kitchen’s tables. This week, MAQ and IMAU are working side…
Written by: Raquel Gonzalez (PhD Meteorology and Air Quality, Wageningen University) English or better Spanglish, Portuguese with Amazonian accent, Spanish with Iberian accent or much, much better forget about languages and attempt that the knowledge is properly transferred in a Babel-melting-pot. We opt for the second: the physics and biological…
Monday morning 0600. Dawn breaks over the metropolis that is Manaus. The city is fully awake and the sound of accelerating scooters, heavy engines and car horns already fill the air. If it weren’t for the heat, humidity and dots of convection that already punctuate the sky, this could be…
We are constantly encouraged to cross borders. To move out of our comfort zone to become creative, original and innovative in our research. These borders are always abstract, undefined and uncharted. They force us to develop personally as scientists, but also to work differently in a team to be more…