ACTRIS

ACTRIS is a European research infrastructure that coordinates the acquisition and dissemination of measurements for the characterisation of ‘short-lived’ components of the atmosphere.
The themes covered by this infrastructure are : 

• aerosols
• the clouds
• reactive trace gases (O3, NO2, NH3, C2H6…)

The data mainly come from measurements carried out on site by remote sensing (photometers, lidars, radars, etc.) or by taking samples (mass spectrometers, nephelometers, etc.) but also from experiments carried out in atmospheric simulation chambers.

It is also available at the national level under the name ACTRIS-FR.

ACTRIS is an ERIC (European Research Infrastructure Consortium) bringing together laboratories, scientific organisations and universities from 22 European countries.
Through ACTRIS, national observation stations are operated in the different countries combining measurements on aerosols, clouds and reactive trace gases both near the surface and with remote sensing systems.
ACTRIS relies on appropriate entities to provide harmonized, reliable and documented observation data and physical access to national facilities for measurements.

• a coordination office for the steering and management of the infrastructure,
• thematic centres for calibration and instrument development,
• a data centre for data access services, data retention and storage.

The ACTRIS Data Centre (ACTRIS-DC) is a distributed centre that is based on pre-existing facilities in different countries. It is administered by the NILU (Norwegian Institute for Atmospheric Research), which hosts the catalogue and the portal to all the data. AERIS is part of this Data Centre. It is in charge of managing remote sensing data for reactive gases, measurements from atmospheric simulation chambers and a large part of the remotely sensed and in-situ data concerning aerosols.
AERIS is also involved at different levels in the governance of ACTRIS-DC: deputy director of the Centre, director of the GRES entity concerning remotely sensed reactive gases, co-director of the ARES entity concerning remotely sensed aerosols. Finally, AERIS is strongly involved in the entity in charge of setting up generic services for users (DVAS) and in the team of scientific experts attached to the management team. The diagram below summarises the role of AERIS in ACTRIS-DC.

The AERIS services provided to ACTRIS through DVAS, ARES, GRES and ASC are :

–campaign support, data collocation, ReObs, GEISA, GARRLIC, NDAAC, EUROCHAMP, etc.

ACTRIS-FR federates the activities of French research organisations around the themes of aerosols, clouds and reactive gases. It gathers the data acquired on :

• instrumented sites: CO-PDD, SIRTA, MAÏDO, P2OA, OHP, LOA, CNRM, etc.
• and simulation platforms: HELIOS, CESAM.

AERIS is the ACTRIS-FR Data Centre. It retrieves, processes, archives, catalogues and distributes all the measurements transmitted by the observation and simulation platforms. The data ‘labelled’ at the European level are also made available within the framework of the European infrastructure ACTRIS.