Presentation
The CAE team has initiated in 2008 and coordinated the atmospheric chemistry aspects of the decadal (2010-2020) multidisciplinary research programme MISTRALS (Mediterranean Integrated Studies aT Regional And Local Scales) coordinated by CNRS.
Objectives and strategy
ChArMEx federated French and many international scientific activities during more than a decade around the core objective of updating knowledge on atmospheric pollution and its impacts in the Mediterranean region, and their evolution in the next decades under climate change and increasing anthropogenic pressure.
To identify pollutant sources, in particular of secondary organic aerosols, their long-range transport, chemical transformations, deposition, variabilities, as well as their main impacts on climate and marine biogeochemistry, ChArMEx organised 4 large regional campaigns using airborne means (see the documentary Science en plein ciel) and federated many other more local in situ studies, coorganised the oceanographic campaign PEACETIME, set up several continuous observation stations including a background super site in Cape Corsica operated during 2 years, and widely exploited satellite remote sensing and numerical modelling.
Production
ChArMEx published many original results in more that 140 refereed articles, including 108 in an on-line special volume, and contributed to more than 40 PhD theses. A review book entitled Atmospheric Chemistry in the Mediterranean Region published by Springer in 2023-2024 ended the project, gathering contributions by 100 co-authors from 16 countries in 2 volumes of more than 600 pages (Volume 1 ; Volume 2). It includes a total of 41 peer-reviewed chapters, of which several written by scientists form CAE, e.g., on the history of aerosol observations in the Mediterranean, and on gas and bioaerosol emissions from the Mediterranean vegetation.
ChArMEx list of peer-reviewed journal articles and PhDs.
The ChArMEx database includes 221 datasets.
Funding
ChArMEx-France mobilised about 12 M€ (excl. permanent staff salaries) from multiple funding sources : ADEME, ANR, CEA, CNRS-INSU, CNES, Collectivité Territoriale de Corse, EU/Infrastructures, Météo-France, Ministère des Affaires Etrangères, IMT Nord-Europe, Région Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, Universités de Clermont-Ferrand, Lille, Marseille, Paris et Versailles-St-Quentin. Funding details of the many other national contributions (Algeria, Cyprus, Germany, Irland, Italy, Malta, Spain, Tunisia, USA, etc.) are not known.
Coordination
ChArMEx-France involved more than twenty French labs, and several tens of European and international teams. Aerosols-climate interaction studies haves been performed in cooperation with the HyMEx project of MISTRALS, and marine biogeochemical impacts of atmsopheric deposition with MERMEX.
Contact coordinateur : François Dulac