Concept and objectives

The fundamental objective of the project is the further integration of existing European research facilities to a grid of reaction chambers in a continuation of the  EUROCHAMP-1 project. These facilities were created to study the impact of atmospheric processes e.g. on regional photochemistry, global change, as well as cultural heritage and human health effects under as realistic conditions as possible.

Although initial advances in the application of large chambers occurred in the United States and Japan, Europe now leads the world in the use of large, highly instrumented chambers for atmospheric model development and evaluation. Smaller chambers that were designed for specific purposes and are operated by experts in their fields excellently supplement the larger chambers. The integration of all these environmental chamber facilities within the framework of the EUROCHAMP-2 project promotes the retention of Europe's international position of excellence in this area and is unique in its kind worldwide. The mobilisation of a large number of stakeholders dealing with environmental chamber techniques provides an infrastructure to the research community at an European level that offers maximum support for a broad community of researchers from different disciplines. The EUROCHAMP-2 project will foster the structuring effect of atmospheric chemistry activities performed in European environmental chambers within EUROCHAMP, since it offers the full availability of corresponding facilities for the whole European scientific community.

With respect to the project objectives mentioned above, three network activities, two joint research activities and a transnational access activity are formulated and cross-linked in the EUROCHAMP-2 project. The major objective of the networking activities within the EUROCHAMP-2 project is to foster the effective interdisciplinary collaboration between the community of atmospheric scientists and colleagues from other disciplines that are closely related to it, which was successfully initiated within the EUROCHAMP project. This will be achieved through the three networking activities of EUROCHAMP-2.

The major objective of the joint research activities within the EUROCHAMP-2 project is the optimisation and further development of the infrastructures' performance. In order to meet these goals, two corresponding research activities are defined in the EUROCHAMP-2 work programme, namely the development and refinement of analytical equipment and the development of chemical and physical modelling techniques.

The infrastructure developed within the EUROCHAMP project has already been used by a large variety of scientists not only from the EU but also worldwide. Through the new transnational access activity the infrastructure will be opened more widely to attract even more colleagues from different disciplines related to atmospheric chemistry to make use of the infrastructure.In this respect EUROCHAMP-2 will continue the work performed within EUROCHAMP now by adding new  partners to the consortium and a variety of transnational access activities, which are now part of the proposed project.