On rocky slopes high above lush pine forests and mountain lakes, a team of researchers just completed the preparation of her equipment.
The mountain is Mount Helmos or Aronian Mountains in the Peloponnese. The rocky peak already has an observatory (demokritos.gr), but in the last two weeks it has acquired new scientific equipment.
What the researchers hope to accomplish is to solve the mystery of cloud formation but also to discover changes in cloud properties. In trying to better understand how Earth's climate works and is shaped by humans, it is essential to know exactly how clouds form and how they respond to human activities.
To date, many details about the clouds are unknown, explains Ulas Im, a senior researcher at the Department of Environmental Science at Aarhus University in Denmark.
Together with colleagues from all over Europe, Ulas Im is at the center of a huge research project called Clean Cloud. The idea is to learn more about how clouds and particles in the atmosphere interact using ground and satellite observations, laboratory experiments and models.
To do this, large field experiments are planned in the European climate hotspots: the Arctic and the Mediterranean.
"We have completed our experiments in northern Greenland and are now turning our attention to the Mediterranean with field experiments in Greece. The Arctic and the Mediterranean are the two regions in Europe most affected by climate change. By studying the clouds in these regions, we hope to better predict future climate changes," says Ulas Im.
The research project is called Clean Cloud and is a collaboration with researchers from 20 institutions in 12 European countries.
The researchers aim to gain new insights into the formation of clouds and their interactions with particles over the next four years.
Ulas Im is the project coordinator.
There is a reason Ulas Im and his colleagues chose Mount Helmos. During the winter the mountain is shrouded in clouds most of the time, and this enables researchers to study the cloud from within.
"Most cloud surveys have been done from below or from airplanes or satellites overhead. We hope that this unique approach will provide us with a more extensive knowledge of the inner workings of clouds," says Ulas Im.
In 2021, a smaller field survey was carried out on Mount Helmos. The data from these experiments were quite encouraging, so the researchers prepared an even bigger project up there.
