Atmospheric measurements at Reunion Island

At an ideal location in the southern subtropics, an atmospheric sta-tion hosts a suite of specialized instruments, producing data for many applications. It is now well-known that the climate is changing, but the effects of climate change vary at different atmospheric levels. For example, climatemodels predict up to a 7K cooling of the strato-sphere, but a warming of the troposphere of about 2K.1 Thus, it is of primary importance to detect and quantify such changes, and to identify and measure exchanges between atmospheric levels. Achieving this goal requires long-term data records doc-umenting the atmosphere’s vertical temperature profile and chemical composition. Ideally, this data should reflect varying types of instruments and approaches (i.e., ground based obser-vations, satellite data, andmodels). At an atmospheric station on Reunion Island, scientists are contributing to this data set (se