The HEPTA Project

The HEPTA (Helmholtz European Partnership for Technological Advancement) project is a Helmholtz funding in the field of sustainable technologies. The cooperation between the Aristotle University in Thessaloniki (AUTh) and KIT is to be strengthened.

In order to promote young scientists, twelve PhD students are supported in their doctoral studies in the fields of "air quality", "physics of the atmosphere" and "biomass". At IMK-ASF, two projects belong to HEPTA in the subfield "Physics of the Atmosphere".

One of the two PhD positions is additionally embedded in a collaboration with the German Weather Service (DWD) to implement a prognostic ozone scheme for ICON. See (https://www.imk-asf.kit.edu/173_3906.php) for more information on this project.

The second project aims to determine the greenhouse gas emissions of the Thessaloniki urban area.

For this purpose, a measurement campaign with portable FTIR spectrometers EM27/SUN was carried out in the summer of 2022. The campaign is a part of the COCCON network, in which KIT is significantly involved (https://www.imk-asf.kit.edu/english/COCCON.php).

The campaign was a direct cooperation with the Institute of Atmospheric Physics at AUTh. The research group of Prof. Dr. Dimitrios Balis has been operating a COCCON measurement at the university site since 2019. During the campaign, two measurement devices were operated, one was stationary on campus, the second was transported to a suitable location on the outskirts of the city, depending on the wind direction. Between May and July, 118 measurement hours were recorded.

Corresponding ICON-ART simulations were carried out and evaluated to expand the interpretation of the measurement results. This is to achieve a more precise determination of the emissions and the estimation of the uncertainty of the measurement result.