RV Investigator recognised as world’s first mobile GAW site

The Global Atmospheric Watch programme of the United Nation’s World Meteorological Organisation aims to provide reliable scientific data and information on the chemical composition of the atmosphere, its natural and anthropogenic change, and helps to improve the understanding of interactions between the atmosphere, the oceans and the biosphere. All GAW stations contribute to this goal by measuring one or more parameters from the GAW focal areas which include aerosols, greenhouse gases, reactive gases, stratospheric ozone, UV radiation and precipitation chemistry.

Until recently, GAW stations around the world have been entirely land-based, with Australia hosting a handful of sites, and the ACC group running the NT-BAPS GAW station, as well as the world renowned premier GAW station, CG-BAPS. However, with the unique atmospheric capabilities of the RV Investigator, with its world-class facilities and ongoing funding, technical and scientific support, the RV Investigator was recently recognised as the world’s first mobile GAW station. You can read all about the atmospheric capability of the RV Investigator here. This recognition allows the Investigator’s data to be more readily accessed by researchers around the world because data will be disseminated through the World Data Centres for each focal area.

Having been only measured a handful of times in the past, the ability of the Investigator to undertake high quality atmospheric measurements continually during it’s full-time operations represents a new era in the research of the marine atmosphere.