- The CoMet 3.0 Tropics field measurement campaign has been successfully completed. The German research aircraft HALO conducted 18 research flights, 14 of which took off from Cuiabá in Brazil, totalling approximately 150 flight hours.
- The result is a unique dataset comprising measurements of greenhouse gases and associated parameters. This dataset will be worked with by many researchers in the coming years.
- The data provide reference values for validating satellite missions such as MERLIN, CO2M, Sentinel-5, GOSAT-2 and GOSAT-GW. They also enable the distinction between natural and anthropogenic sources of methane, contributing to the development of an MRV (monitoring, reporting and verification) system for greenhouse gas emissions.
From July 25 to September 6, 2026, the unique scientific instruments on board the German research aircraft HALO measured methane and carbon dioxide levels over South American wetlands. The flights took place over the Amazon and the Pantanal (Portuguese for ‘wetland’), as well as the Cerrado wet savannah. For the first time HALO’s flights went to Bolivia, over the wetlands of the Llanos de Moxos.
CoMet 3.0 Tropics was jointly led by the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena, the DLR Institute of Atmospheric Physics and the University of Bremen as equal scientific partners, in close collaboration with the Brazilian National Institute for Space Research (INPE). The University of Heidelberg and numerous other German and Brazilian institutions contributed additional expertise and measurements. Around 120 researchers from Germany and Brazil participated in the campaign.
Christoph Gerbig, groupleader at the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry and PI for in-situ observations, is still thrilled about the campaign. “The excellent collaboration between the participating institutions was what made this campaign particularly successful. The German teams brought together a variety of scientific approaches and requirements for the flight patterns – from our in-situ measurements to remote sensing – and managed to integrate them extremely well. Equally important was the close collaboration with scientists from many Brazilian institutions who contributed ground-based observations. Having participated in numerous field campaigns over more than 30 years, I consider CoMet 3.0 Tropics to be the best campaign I have experienced so far.”
Read more.. (in English) | Weiterlesen.. (auf Deutsch)
Reported by:
