ACONVEX—Aerosols, Clouds, cONvection, Experiment—A new site in central Amazonia for long term monitoring of aerosol-clouds-convection interactions

Amazon basin during the wet season is one of the few places on Earth where both the “natural” and the “anthropogenic polluted” atmospheres can be observed. Atmosphere in clean Amazonia can be regarded as a baseline state of tropical atmosphere. Despite its strong hydrological cycle, with the associated feedbacks into climate, several scientific questions with respect to convection remain unclear. For instance, the diurnal cycle of convection over the Amazon is far from adequately represented in numeric models: while precipitation typically occurs in early morning in the models, actual rain occurs mostly in the early afternoon. This discrepancy, mainly due to misrepresentation of shallow clouds and its transition to deep convection, induces further model errors at longer timescales (lower frequencies) due to climatic teleconections. If the cloud development in the clean atmosphere is not well understood, how can one hope to understand aerosol-clouds-convection interactions? One approach, presented in this paper, is to have long term measurements that could characterize clouds and its diurnal cycle, at the same time as aerosols, in regions where deep convection is important, such as the Amazon. The implementation of ACONVEX (Aerosols, Clouds, cONVection EXperiment) site, situated 50 km upwind from the megacity of Manaus ( -2.894263 S, -59.971452 W) aims to fill the existent gap in long term measurements in the tropical rainforests. It started in 2011 and was designed to make measurements for more than 10 yrs. Present time instrumentation set comprises: 1) UV Raman Lidar; 2) CIMEL Sunphotometer; 3) MultiFilter shadow band Radiometer; 4) GNSS/GPS Receiver; 5) Vertical Pointing Radar; 6) Disdrometer; 7) Ceilometer; 8) Met station. Two sky imagers and a microwave radiometer are being installed and will be able to derive cloud cover, cloud Top and cloud base heights, liquid water content, integrated precipitable water, PBL Height, rain rate (vertical profile and at surface). In this poster we will discuss the site in more detail, as well as recent results (with special focus to the period Oct/2012-Jul/2013) and future perspectives.