The proposal aims to establish a new Observatory at Dome C for a continuous, all year-round monitoring and study of atmospheric chemical composition. This Observatory will represent an upgrade of the observation laboratory which was successfully set-up within the PNRA Long-Term Project LTCPAA.
Our purpose is to turn such a well-established infrastructure into a permanent facility able to join on-line and off-line atmospheric measurements covering a very large number of chemical species.
On-line data would be provided by ozone analysers, already available at Dome C, and by a state-of-art time-resolved Analyser of ion markers both in gas and particulate phase, to be acquired with this project.
The data provided by this instrument will need to be tested against measurements accomplished by the traditional approach of aerosol sampling and following chemical analysis in Italy. Once the new instrumental set-up will be validated, these automatic measurements will replace the current sampling and analysis activity.
As regarding the chemical components which at now cannot be measured continuously directly in the atmosphere (main and trace elements, C-cycle species, including EC and OC, amino-acids, and anhydrosugars), off-line data will continue to be provided by a continuous sampling of atmospheric aerosol, thanks to the samplers already present at Dome C and robust analysis facilities in Italy.
Such a layout will provide Concordia Station with a permanent Observatory specifically focused on a multi-parametric analysis of the atmospheric chemistry, equipped with advanced instrumentation and able to be integrated in a network of Observatories at global scale.
The remarkable expertise of all the research units in the study of polar atmosphere, their consolidated international collaborations, the successful experience of LTCPAA Project and the long-standing fruitful collaboration among the involved researchers, all represent solid premises to fulfil the objectives of the project.