21 - UB

The Institute of Environmental Physics, founded in 1993, has over 100 Ph.D. students and postdocs exploring the system Earth with physical methods. Foci are the atmospheric, oceanic and cryospheric sciences and remote sensing methods, among other with satellites, and ground based, airborne and shipborne sensors. Many projects use external platforms or carrier systems, among them the research vessel Polarstern of the Alfred-Wegener-Institute in Bremerhaven, research aircrafts, stratospheric balloons and ground based stations all around the world, from the tropics to the poles. Most important tools for our work are the satellite experiments like SCIAMACHY on ENVISAT and AMSR-E /AMSR2 on AQUA and GCOM-W. For these instruments the institute operationally calculates a high number of retrieval data products, among of them atmospheric parameters and daily maps of sea ice concentration and thickness which are appreciated since 1999 by a worldwide user community, see www.iup.uni-bremen.de/8084/amsr2. 

Role in the project

• WP2: New technologies to fill the gap in the in situ observing system:  
• Near real time retrieval of atmospheric total water vapor over Arctic sea ice and open ocean from microwave sounders and imagers
• Detection of polar mesocyclones using satellite microwave sounder data (AMSU-B, MHS)
• Sea ice concentration under summer conditions •
• WP5: Validation activities for the three products above.