AWACA brings together a team of researchers working to improve understanding of the atmospheric branch of the water cycle in Antarctica. The aim is to gain a better understanding of the processes that govern the weather in this region of the Earth in order to predict future climate change. To achieve this, a set of autonomous platforms will be deployed along a 1,100-kilometre transect, from the French Dumont d’Urville station on the coast to the Franco-Italian Concordia station on the high plateau of the continent.

These platforms will be equipped with various types of measuring instruments that will make it possible to study the formation and evolution of snowflakes. Isotopic analyses will be carried out in order to trace the phase changes of water in the atmosphere (gas, liquid, solid). This isotopic analysis will provide a range of information on past climate variations through the drilling of ice cores. Measurements will be taken throughout the year, which represents a major challenge given the extreme weather conditions in Antarctica. This dataset is essential for improving the representation of physical processes in climate models and for refining future climate projections.

The project, which is funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No. 951596 – AWACA), will begin on 1 September 2021 for a duration of six years. The first two years will focus on the development and acquisition of the instruments required for field data collection. The measurement campaign will start in December 2023, followed by a data analysis phase. Once validated, the data will be used to parameterise physical processes in order to account for their effects in climate models. Through its combined model–data approach, AWACA will make it possible to reconstruct the variability of Antarctica’s climate and atmospheric water cycle over the past 1,000 years, and to predict this variability over the next 100 years.