ATTO (Amazon Tall Tower Observatory)
Climate research in the Amazon rainforest
ATTO, the Amazon Tall Tower Observatory, is a unique scientific platform for long-term research on the changing role of Amazon forests in the Earth system. Research at ATTO seeks to improve fundamental understanding of the complex physical, chemical and biological interactions between the world’s largest expanse of tropical forest and the atmosphere.
The Amazon forest plays important global roles in biodiversity, carbon cycling, water resources and climate. However, we do not know how the Amazon is changing with ongoing global warming and changing atmospheric composition. ATTO, the Amazon Tall Tower Observatory, was built to provide a long-term platform to study the complex processes governing how forests exchange energy, water, and matter with the atmosphere and how they are affected by extreme events like drought or wind damage.
ATTO provides an example of German-Brazilian scientific cooperation as one of the largest scientific infrastructure projects in Brazil. Over 200 scientists, students and technicians contribute to ATTO research. It is a highly visible international ‘flagship’ program for the Max-Planck Society, the German ministry for Research and Education (BMBF) and the Brazilian Ministry for Science, Technology and Communication (MCTIC). ATTO is operated through INPA, the Brazilian Institute for research in the Amazon, in Manaus. Our further main research partners are located at the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena, the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz, the Karlsruhe Institute for Technology KIT, and the State University of Amazonas (UEA).
The ATTO site is equipped with extensive and state-of-the-art instrumentation for our multidisciplinary research. Instruments measure gases, aerosols (fine airborne particles), monitor energy and water balance, the exchanges of air from soils to 325 m and the life cycles of clouds. At the heart of the station is the 325-m tall tower that provides an unprecedented platform for sampling air and climate variables that integrate the influence of the forest upwind over many hundreds of kilometers. It also fills a gap in high-quality observations from a key region of the global climate system. Data generated by ATTO are being used worldwide to improve future climate predictions.
