The extreme precipitation that occurs during the Asiatic monsoon season repeatedly causes catastrophic devastation in Southeast Asia. The same weather systems which cause these extreme events also affect the altitude region of 12 to 20 kilometers.
Strong convection transports partly heavily polluted air masses from the ground-level atmosphere in Southeast Asia into this altitude region, the so-called upper troposphere/lower stratosphere, and from the northern Pacific subsequently to Europe. This transport will be investigated over the next two months by a team of atmospheric researchers during the PHILEAS (Probing High Latitude Export of Air from the Asian Summer Monsoon) mission. Forschungszentrum Jülich and Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) are coordinating the project. Airborne measurement flights using the high altitude HALO aircraft will be taking off from Oberpfaffenhofen in Bavaria starting on Sunday and from Anchorage in Alaska in about two weeks.
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