Emma Järvinen

Emma Järvinen got awarded a Helmholtz Young Investigator Group (Nachwuchsgruppe) to investigate cirrus cloud optical properties and cloud radiative effect. The group will be installed at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, where the grand will support this research for a period of six years with 1.8 Mio Euro.

Majority of the natural ice crystals are complex. This we have been able to show in field campaigns covering variety of geographical locations. The crystal complexity does to just affect the appearance of the ice crystals but also significantly alters their short wave angular light scattering properties. An enhanced backscattering is observed that, when incorporated to a global climate model, can increase the cooling effect of ice clouds. A recent article published in ACP links these field observations to climate modelling.

After three field campaigns in 2017, it's time to publish again. This time observations made in the ML-CIRRUS campaign in 2014. This was my very first airborne campaign and I got to be part of the KIT team operating the Small Ice Detector 3. The campaign focused on the microphysical properties of mid-latitude cirrus ice crystals. For this article, we have analysed the mesoscopic complexity of small (<50 µm) ice crystals in cirrus clouds of different origins.

Six months after the ACLOUD campaign in the Arctic summer I get to participate with the PHIPS instrument to the SOCRATES campaign to investigate mixed-phase clouds in the Southern Ocean in the Australian summer time. The mostly NSF-funded campaign uses the NCAR G-V for the airborne investigations. An international science team will spend the next six weeks based in Hobart, TAS, and will perform research flights towards Antarctic coast.

I wish all my readers Happy Holidays! I'll be spending my holidays in Boulder preparing for SOCRATES campaign and reporting the beginning of next year from Tasmania. See you then!

Check the newest edition of lookKIT (4/2017) for my portrait interview. lookKIT is a magazine giving an update of the newest research, stories and people working at KIT. Articles are in German with English summary.

I got the honour of receive the 2017 Helmholtz Doctoral Prize for my PhD work with measurements of light scattering properties of atmospheric ice crystals. The prize ceremony took place in Berlin in the Helmholtz annual meeting. Five other candidates were awarded for their outstanding work in each of the Helmholtz topics. Photo by Michael Reinhardt.

Scientists in ACLOUD expedition are trying to get new insight into the rapid warming taking place in the arctic (the arctic amplification). ACLOUD employs two Basler BT-67 aircrafts (Polar 5 & 6) - one equipped with in-situ instrumentation and one for remote sensing. Coordinated flights are taking place from Longyearbyen, Svalbard, targeting arctic clouds from northern Atlantic to sea ice north of Svalbard. Altogether 80 flight hours have been designated for the project.

The ARISTO2017 was the last step for the development of the PHIPS-HALO probe. After over 15 years of development work, PHIPS-HALO is completed and working with its full capability. The innovative idea behind the instrument is to simultaneously image atmospheric ice particles and measure their angular light scattering function. However, the realisation is a challenge in an environment, where the micrometer sized ice particles are moving with up to 250 m/s. After ARISTO2017 PHIPS-HALO is ready for the upcoming high-latitude mission in Arctic (ACLOUD) and Antarctic (SOCRATES) and a paper of the final version of the instrument is expected to be published this year.