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Jungfraujoch, Switzerland, 46.55°N, 7.98°E

Introduction

The International Scientific Station of the Jungfraujoch (ISSJ) is a very nice observatory located in the Swiss Alps (46°N, 3570 m). It is part of the NDACC network as one of the primary alpine station. Due to its privilegied position, the station is the base for a lot of scientific work in many varied research fields such as physiology, meteorology, glaciology, atmospheric research...

ISSJ participates to a large number of international scientific programmes including European and international satellite validation projects. BIRA-IASB operates a SAOZ instrument since June 1990. The station is also equipped with a high-resolution FTIR spectrometer operated jointly by BIRA-IASB and the Université de Liège (Belgium).


View of the Jungfraujoch station.

More information concerning the Jungfraujoch research station can be found on http://www.ifjungo.ch/.

Instrument and operation

The SAOZ (Système d'Analyse par Observations Zénithales) instrument has been designed in the late eighties by Jean-Pierre POMMEREAU and Florence GOUTAIL from the CNRS, France. It's a fully automated broad-band instrument (300-600 nm) optimised for the measurement of stratospheric NO2 and O3 at the twilight using the DOAS technique. The instrument is a Jobin-Yvon spectrometer coupled to a 1024 Hamamatsu photo diode array. Because of its very simple concept, it can be used at all latitudes; it's present at a large number of NDACC stations.
Since July 2010, a MAXDOAS has been installed close to the SAOZ. The instrument is a dual-channel system covering the UV (300-390 nm) and the visible region (from 400 nm to 550 nm) with a resolution of ~0.4nm and ~0.9nm respectively. A description of the instrument can be found here and in Clémer et al., 2010. ). Multi-axis scans from the zenith to below the horizon (down to the Kleine Scheidegg valley) are implemented, as well as direct-sun measurements.

Data

Time series of morning and evening twilight observations of O3 and NO2 total column amounts can be extended back to 1990. BIRA-IASB provides the CALVAL (http://nadir.nilu.no/calval/index.php) and the GEOMON (http://www.geomon.eu/) data bases with these data in HDF format. The O3 times series and the NO2 times series cleaned from tropospheric signatures are also available on the NDACC data base in NASA-AMES format.

Scientific highlights

A thorough study on the long-term evolution of stratospheric NO2 is performed using two decades of observational data at the Jungfraujoch station. More information about this work can be found here.

List of publications

Clémer, K., Van Roozendael, M., Fayt, C., Hendrick, F., Hermans, C., Pinardi, G., Spurr, R., Wang, P., and De Mazière, M.: Multiple wavelength retrieval of tropospheric aerosol optical properties from MAXDOAS measurements in Beijing, Atmos. Meas. Tech., 3, 863-878, doi:10.5194/amt-3-863-2010, 2010.
 
Last update on 13 Dec 2011