The Pan Eurasian Experiment (PEEX) is an initiative headed by the Institute for Atmospheric and Earth System Research (INAR) contributing to excellent science, education and science policy.
PEEX is a multidisciplinary climate change, air quality, environment and research infrastructure programme focused on the northern boreal Pan-Eurasian regions, the Arctic, and China. It aims to be a next-generation natural sciences and socio-economic research initiative using excellent multi-disciplinary, multi-scale research and research infrastructure aimed at resolving the major uncertainties in Earth System Science and sustainability across the PEEX region.
PEEX began as a bottom up initiative in 2012 at the Institute for Atmospheric and Earth System Research (INAR) of the University of Helsinki, involving several European, Russian and Chinese research organisations and institutions. PEEX actively welcomes new institutes to join in.
INAR provides cutting-edge research on climate change, air quality, biogeochemical cycles and ecosystem processes. Headed by Director Academician Markku Kulmala, INAR places among the world’s top ranked institutions for atmospheric sciences (Shanghai Ranking 2019). It hosts 10 of the highest cited geoscientists in the world and offers innovative pedagogical research-based courses. Beyond academia, INAR has founded and is involved in several international environmental programmes and spin-offs in research infrastructure and aerosol technology. INAR works to build collaboration networks that cross international borders and creates services aimed at a multi-stakeholder society.
The PEEX programme and research agenda
The PEEX programme agenda is divided into four focus areas:
- Research agenda;
- Infrastructures;
- Impact on society; and
- Knowledge Transfer (PEEX Science Plan).
Aims of the PEEX research agenda:
- To understand the Earth system and the influence of environmental and societal changes in pristine and industrialised Pan-Eurasian environments (system understanding); and
- To determine the processes relevant to climate change, demographic development and use of energy resources in the Arctic-boreal regions (process understanding).
Our main objective is to reduce the scientific uncertainties related to climate change at global scale by quantifying the essential feedback mechanisms between the atmospheric processes and changing functioning of biosphere.
EXPERTISE
Our expertise is grounded on our long history of work based on a network of field stations producing extensive long-term data on atmospheric properties and ecological mass fluxes in different types of environments and regions, including Arctic, boreal and tropical ecosystems, and on focused experiments and modeling aimed at understanding the observed patterns.
We have been awarded with the Academy of Finland Center of Excellence status three times since 2002 and the Nordic Center of Excellence status in 2003 and 2010.
RESEARCH INTERESTS
Our main scientific objective is to quantify the feedback between the atmospheric processes and key ecosystem variables in a changing climate. In order to do this, we will:
- Find out and quantify the main climatic feedback and forcing mechanisms related to aerosols, clouds, precipitation, biosphere-atmosphere and cryosphere-atmosphere interactions;
- Develop, refine and utilise the newest measurement techniques and modelling tools, scaling from quantum chemistry to global Earth System Observations and Models;
- Create a deep and quantitative understanding on the role of atmospheric clusters and aerosol particles in local and global biogeochemical cycles of water, carbon, sulfur and nitrogen and their linkages to the atmospheric chemistry;
- combine ground measurements with remote sensing data, laboratory experiments, computer models together with machine learning tools, and
- Integrate the results in the context of regional and global scale Earth system understanding.
INAR hosts the PEEX Headquarters and coordinates the PEEX network together with the PEEX Regional offices in Russia and China. Contact the PEEX-HQ to join the PEEX community. If you want to know more about our observation stations network, please visit GlobalSMEAR.
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