Atmospheric WAter Cycle over Antarctica Past, Present & future

The European Union-funded AWACA project will strive to answer this question, improving our understanding of how snow in Antarctica forms, falls and in what quantity. To understand and predict the fate of atmospheric water including isotopes all along the tropospheric column, the project will apply a consistent and comprehensive combined observation and modelling framework. AWACA will also combine adapted/designed instruments to form fully autonomous observation platforms deployed at several sites along a 1 100 km coast-to-plateau transect aligned with the typical moisture-carrying air mass trajectories. The findings will help scientists gain a deeper understanding of past, present and future variabilities