The Mace Head Atmospheric Research Station, near Carna, Co. Galway is operated under the auspices of the Mace Head Management Committee, drawn from cluster personnel. Members of the cluster are also involved in research activities under the auspices of the Environmental Change Institute. The Atmospheric Research Station at Mace Head, is unique in Europe, offering westerly exposure to the North Atlantic ocean and the opportunity to study atmospheric composition under Northern Hemispheric background conditions as well as European continental emissions when the winds favour transport from that region. Current aerosol, gaseous, radiation and meteorological measurements are achieved at Mace Head.

1. Research interest and particular competences 2. Geographical information 3. Meteorological information 4. Instrumentation / Monitoring activities 5. Specific information 6. Institution in charge 7. Contact person 8. Images	download PDF version
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1. RESEARCH INTEREST AND PARTICULAR COMPETENCES

The Department of Experimental Physics recently completed a Strategic Plan as a framework for managing change and development over the period  up to 2007.  A key element in this strategy is the rationalisation of the research activity into three viable research clusters which includes the recent addition of Applied Optics:

(a) Atmospheric, Environmental & Aerosol Physics
(b) Applied Optics, Photonics & Biological/Biomedical Sensing
(c) Astronomy & Astronomical Instrumentation

The Atmospheric, Environmental and Aerosol Physics cluster, consists of four permanent staff (Byrne, Jennings, Roddy, O'Dowd), one Adjunct Professor (Reist), and currently some ten research staff and 10 postgraduate students.  These twenty or more people work in three research groups within the cluster, namely the Built Environment Group (Miriam Byrne), the Atmospheric Research Group (Gerard Jennings, Colin O'Dowd) based in the Department of Physics, and the Meteorology Group (Aodhagán Roddy), located in the Martin Ryan Marine Science Institute.  The cluster members have developed a leadership role in Ireland and abroad in areas of climate change and air quality.  The Mace Head Atmospheric Research Station, near Carna, Co. Galway is operated under the auspices of the Mace Head Management Committee, drawn from cluster personnel (http://macehead.nuigalway.ie).  Members of the cluster are also involved in research activities under the auspices of the Environmental Change Institute  (http://nuigalway.ie/eci/) .

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2. GEOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

Click here for Geographical information.

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3. METEOROLOGICAL INFORMATION

Click here for Meteorological information.

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4. INSTRUMENTATION / MONITORING ACTIVITIES

Click here for an overview of the available instrumentation.

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5. SPECIFIC INFORMATION

a) URL of field site:

http://macehead.nuigalway.ie

b) Policy in relation to data availability and data access:

Meteorological data is freely available for research purposes. Contact person - see j) below for details  should be contacted for access to the data.

Micrometeorological, gas, aerosol and aerosol optical property research data is normally within the preserve of the Research Investigators operating this equipment at the station.

If data is required by an external investigator to directly support a research task, collaboration, and if appropriate, authorship on scientific publications, should be offered to the research team responsible for measurements, quality assurance and interpretation of the research data in question in order to ensure that proper credit is given to the researchers and that maximum added value can be extracted from the suite of measurements.

There is an increasing amount of Mace Head hourly data being placed on the CREATE (EU Project) Database housed at NILU  (http://www.nilu.no/projects/ccc/create) . This data is also converted to a suitable format for archiving at the World Data Centre for Aerosols (http://ies.irs.cec.eu.int/wdca)  at Ispra - (information on data submission and retrieval is found in the WDCA web site; contact: Julian Wilson)

c) Access to the facility:

d) Fee for using the facility:

Unfortunately, Mace Head received no ongoing infrastructural support and relies totally on subsidy from general research grants to support specifically targeted research projects. Therefore, to maintain facilities at Mace Head and to cover running costs such as electricity and network access, a modest fee is charged to visiting scientists. This fee amounts to 50-100 euro per day depending on instrument power requirements etc.  Changes to infrastructure to accommodate specific sampling and associated technician costs will have to be costed in any Access-to-Infrastructure proposal along with the aforementioned access/running costs.

e) Scheduled scientific activities at the site:

There is normally one large scale intensive field campaign on average each year at Mace Head. Recent and earlier internationally based campaigns include: QUEST, BIOFLUX, NAMBLEX, PARFORCE, ACSOE, TOR, BMCAPE and AEROCE.

f) Association to national, European and/or international networks:

Mace Head is a Global Atmosphere Watch (GAW) station of the World Meteorological Organisation since 1994. It is host to a number of internationally based Research Networks including AGAGE (Advanced Global Atmospheric Gases Experiment); GAW Precision Filter Radiometer network for measurement of aerosol optical depth; NRPB network for continuous measurement of UV and solar radiation; measurement of total gaseous mercury in cooperation with the Irish Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and GKSS, Geesthacht, Germany;  national ozone network in cooperation with the EPA; flask sampling network in collaboration with NOAA; CO2 collaborative programme with CNRS, Gif sur Yvette, Paris and the University of Bristol.

g) Indication on specific issues for which collaboration is sought:

Collaboration is particularly sought on issues relating to aerosol formation processes, aerosol microphysics and physicochemical properties; the radiative properties of aerosols; and on effects of aerosols on both the direct effect and indirect effect of aerosols on climate.

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6. INSTITUTION IN CHARGE

The Physics Department at the National University of Ireland, Galway, operates the Atmospheric Research Station at Mace Head, near Carna, Co. Galway, Ireland. The Department of Experimental Physics exists within the Faculty of Science of the University, which was formerly named University College Galway.  This Faculty has the largest student enrolment of any Science Faculty in the country.   Degrees in either Experimental Physics, Applied Physics and Electronics Degree, or Physics and Astronomy are offered.  There has been a rapid recent growth in the number of research personnel in the department, which now has more than 30 postgraduate students and a similar number of postdoctoral and research staff.

For more information on the Department, please visit the web site:
http://www.physics.nuigalway.ie

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7. CONTACT PERSON

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8. IMAGES

View of the extended Cottage Laboratory facility 300 m from the shore	A view of the Shore Laboratories from Cottage Laboratory
The original 22 m AEROCE tower and the two shore laboratories

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