The new organization of the European research infrastructures towards world class research facilities and data services is under way. One of the key areas of European interest in the ESFRI process is the Environment segment including climate and air quality monitoring, and in particular aerosol and cloud observation. Aerosols, clouds, greenhouse and trace gases are the key atmospheric components related to processes and feedback mechanisms of Earth radiation balance, climate change and air quality as highlighted again in the recent IPCC report. The Radiative Forcing generated by aerosol in the atmosphere, which includes cloud adjustments due to aerosols, is –0.9 [–1.9 to -0.1] W m-2 (medium confidence), and results from a negative forcing from most aerosols and a positive contribution from black carbon absorption of solar radiation. Contrary to greenhouse gases, radiative forcing by short-lived trace gases and aerosol particles, in particular, is still very uncertain and they continue to contribute the largest uncertainty to the total RF estimate. Starting the Horizon2020 framework program, the strategy for developing a sustainable research infrastructure for atmospheric short-lived climate forcers (SLCF) is under way with a number of calls for proposal opened. A first call published may permit continuation of ACTRIS-I3 (INFRAIA). The commission also opens the possibility for research Infrastructure for the Environmental domain to better coordinate their activities, including the atmospheric domain (INFRADEV-4). Finally, the road to including new Research Infrastructures as part of the ESFRI strategy is opened in INFRADEV-1 that may be suited to promote ACTRIS-RI for long-term continuity, joint development, and coordination of activities of the aerosol and cloud observing system in Europe. The European observing infrastructure framework will therefore considerably evolve in the 2014-2016 period. The French community has been extremely active in developing the current state of infrastructure programs. The current project seeks to establish an efficient research network in France to ensure that national leadership in the field is maintained through an active role in responding to EU opportunities in 2014/2015 and that synergies between National and European strategies are efficiently developed. This is the objective of this 2-year program: structuring the national component of a European Research Infrastructure for CLoud, aerosol and trace gases observations not currently part of ICOS/IAGOS and ensuring the proper level of national leadership in future EU Infrastructure programs. The submission of this project follows a mandate from INSU-OA division to work towards establishing a national Research Infrastructure for the Atmospheric Sciences in the framework of ALLENVI.

Black Carbon (BC) is the product of incomplete combustion of fossil fuels, biofuels and biomass, and is co-emitted with other aerosols, such as organic carbon and sulphates. Black carbon and co-emitted aerosols make up the majority of PM2.5 air pollution, and is the leading environmental cause of poor health and premature death. Black Carbon also impacts climate by exerting a direct net positive radiative forcing at the top-of-the atmosphere equivalent to ~40% of the current radiative forcing due to the CO2 greenhouse effect. In addition, BC influences cloud formation and properties, and impacts regional circulation and rainfall patterns. Finally, when deposited on ice and snow causes positive climate forcing by reducing the albedo of the cryosphere, hence increasing its melting rate. Owing to its impacts on climate and health, BC is receiving growing attention. However, there are still large uncertainties related to the magnitude of the impact of atmospheric BC due to difficulties to obtain accurate emission inventories. As a result, current global climate models systematically underestimate the BC direct radiative forcing relative to observations, which is often attributed to the underestimation of BC emissions. Another impact of BC, much less known than its direct impacts on health and climate, is related to its introduction in the ocean. The atmospheric lifetime of BC ranges from a few days to a few weeks, and BC eventually deposits on the surface of lands and oceans. In addition to the direct deposition on the surface of the ocean, significant amounts of BC deposited on lands are washed out by rainfall and transported by rivers, hence ultimately ending up in the ocean. The estimated total flux of BC to the ocean via direct atmospheric deposition and fluvial transport is on the order of 20 Tg/year. Since estimates of the flux of BC to the ocean are derived from estimates of BC emissions, they may be underestimated as well. Finally, at the global scale, emissions of BC are expected to increase in the coming decades (up to 40% more BC emitted by 2060) due to growing energy demand; this global increase masking wide regional differences, as it will be mostly localized in Asia. Considering that most of the BC ends up in the ocean, it is important to understand how this material impacts marine systems. Because BC are highly porous and surface-active particles, with a high density, they can ad/absorb dissolved compounds, increase aggregation processes and ballast sinking particulate organic matter. Because they bring nutrients and contaminants to the surface ocean, and modify the structuring of the environment at the microscale, BC may alter phytoplankton and microbial community composition and activity. As a result, BC may alter the efficiency of the Biological Carbon Pump, and hence could lead to either positive or negative feedbacks on the atmospheric concentration of CO2. Owing to its short residence time in the atmosphere, atmospheric-BC is considered as a short-lived climate forcer, which mitigation has been suggested to have a direct and rapid effect on climate change. Considering the long residence time of BC in ocean (i.e., >2400 years), and its potential impacts on marine processes responsible for the production of biogenic carbon, for the transfer of organic carbon from the dissolved to the particulate phase, for the formation and characteristics of sinking marine aggregates, and subsequent feedback on climate, marine-BC may act as a long-lived climate forcer.

Allergy to pollen is an increasing human health problem with more than 20% of children sensitized. This problem is expected to be emphasized by climate change. One important tool for adaptation and prevention of risk is to be able to forecast the risk based on forecasting peak of airborne pollen concentration. This is helpful for sensitized population to limit their exposition and for medical and pharmacological system to anticipate needs. However only few attempts have been done to include pollen within air quality forecasting system. The project aims at addressing this question by developing a forecasting system of allergy risk to pollen in response to weather conditions at the French level to implement in French and European air quality forecasting systems. The project is based on a complementary and combined approach with data and model. A first objective of the project will be to improve the existing french aerobiological network by developing a new generation of automatic real time pollen sensors. The current measurement are indeed done by manual count of pollen grains. This limit the number of station that can be managed and induce delay between measurement and estimation of pollen load. These new automatic sensors will open a new era for aerobiological survey by allowing both real time informations and a better spatial coverage. A second objective of the project will be to develop a complete modeling chain to describe all the processes from production of pollen by plants to transport by the atmosphere. This model will include all the processes related to pollen emission including plant phenology and pollen production related to climate conditions. A method will also be developed to assimilate in-situ data by dynamic optimisation of parameters of the surface pollen emission model to obtain to most reliable pollen forecast. Finally a link will be done between pollen concentration and clinical symptoms by relating pollen to prescription of drugs and clinical index filled by a doctor’s network. This studies will allow to defined empirical relationships that will be included into the modeling system to assess a factor of risk. This system will be implemented into the French air quality system PREV’AIR and the proof of concept will be evaluated. The multidisciplinary consortium will be based on public research institute , operators for air quality monitoring and two private companies and the global leader in immunotherapy who will help to define user requirements

The representation of clouds, aerosols and cloud-aerosol-radiation interaction remain the largest uncertainties in climate change, limiting our ability to accurately reconstruct and predict future climate change. The South East (SE) Atlantic is a region where high atmospheric aerosol loadings (from biomass burning, mineral dust, marine origin) and semi-permanent stratocumulus cloud are co-located. This area provides a unique natural laboratory for studying the full range of aerosol-radiation and aerosol-cloud interactions and their perturbations of the Earth’s radiation budget. Aside the fundamental knowledge that can be gained from the study of this environment, these perturbations of the radiative systems occurring in SE have a significant impact, not just locally but also via global teleconnections on wider changes in climate. There have never been detailed although measurements of the combined cloud-aerosol-radiation system over the SE Atlantic are crucial in constraining the current generation of large eddy simulation, numerical weather prediction and climate models. The AErosol RadiatiOn and CLOuds in Southern Africa (AEROCLO-SA) project proposes a break-through study focusing on the South East (SE) Atlantic off the western coast of southern Africa providing with a novel evaluation of the interactions between aerosols, clouds and radiation and their representation in global and regional models. AEROCLO-SA will deliver a wide range of airborne, surface-based and satellite measurements of clouds, aerosols, and their radiative impacts to 1) improve representation in models of absorbing and scattering aerosols 2) reduce uncertainty of the direct, semi-direct and indirect radiative effect, and their impact on stratocumulus clouds; 3) challenge satellite retrievals of cloud and aerosol and their radiative impacts to validate and improve algorithms; AEROCLO-SA is the French contribution in the framework of a very high level international, synergistic project. Aside the French contribution (5 leading laboratories from Universities and CNRS), it gathers partners - from the UK (Met Office, Univ. of Reading, Manchester, Oxford, …) within the CLARIFY-2016 project ); - from the USA within the NSF LASIC project (22 US universities and research labs) and within the US NASA ORACLES (5 NASA research centers and 8 Universities); - and from southern African Universities under the umbrella of the ARSAIO research initiative (CNRS/NRF). AEROCLO-SA includes ground-based and airborne measurements, and modelling. The present project aims at funding the airborne part of the French contribution 1/ to allow the French community who was part of the overall strategy from the very beginning to eventually participate to its implementation during the international field campaign 2/ to gather unique datasets 3/ to participate the valorization of the international dataset.

The development of operational services dedicated to mitigate natural and anthropogenic risks is one of the objectives of this ANR call. In the frame of a previous project already led by SPE lab, IDEA (2010-2013 Forest-Fires, from combustion Emissions to Atmospheric transport), considered as a highlighted project by the ANR, several demonstrators dedicated to wildfire risk were developed (codes, approaches, services), aiming at proposing a new generation fire decision support system. Available thanks to recent technological advances in the field of meteorology, data assimilation, fire modeling and supercomputing these tools have only been tested and partially validated on a limited amount of case studies and over limited time periods. The goal of the FireCaster project is to extent the approaches at the national scale by prototyping a platform that allows to estimate upcoming fire risk (H+24 to H+48) and in case of crisis, to predict fire front position and local pollution (H+1 to H+12). The main challenge is here to deliver these new diagnostics immediately for any given territory and at any given forecast date. It requires to overcome a key issue: access to high resolution (50m) fuel models and data. In order to characterize these fuels and potential pollution products, it is planned to use new vegetation atlas and study smoke emissions for various fuel types and states of fuel. These models will then be generalized to the whole French territory, not by developing specific codes, but for the first time by linking them to surface models, which simulate energy exchanges and water cycle in meteorological models. Surface models recently had a strong increase in resolution and accuracy that makes this link possible (SURFEX model -CNRM- operational). In terms of risk, we propose a probabilistic approach, based on large sets of perturbed multi-model simulations (INRIA), to determine the distribution of potential fire sizes. This approach will provide a new diagnostic (fire burnt area) very different from the current indicator (risk of fire ignition with no indication on the potential size). Fire fighting tools should help to estimate the benefits and risks of each intervention scenario as planned by crisis management centres. They should also evaluate the impact of fires on air pollution and smoke for fire-fighters and population alert. Probability impact maps for each fire fighting scenario, showing areas where the passage of fire is highly expectable, will be obtained by ensemble simulations, taking into account interactively fire-fighting actions. Another, deterministic and more detailed coupled Fire/Meso-NH atmospheric crisis model will determine front position, smoke pollution and local micro-meteorology with data assimilation of aerial/spaceborne observation of fire contours; it will be implemented (CECI) to reduce the uncertainty of these deterministic predictions. Eventually, in order to link the resulting computations to innovative indicators, economic, human and environmental costs will be evaluated (LISA). At the national French level, Météo-France, responsible for this public service mission, will supervise and test the project and evaluate the products within a steering committee also composed of the European Forest Fire Information System (JRC), the National Forestry Services (ONF), the French government space agency (CNES) and Corsican fire brigades (to test crisis tools). While the project success first requires a successful application at national scale, there exists a strong potential of development at the European level. All codes will be Open-Science with French SMEs interested in selling the knowledge required to apply the platform to other countries or areas in the frame of SAFE Cluster (former Pôle Risques).