Update (September 2026)

The full analysis of the ATMOSFER campaign has now been submitted for peer review. The study covers not only FIRMOS-B but the full suite of synergistic instruments flown during the campaign – lightweight hygrometers, optical particle counters, an ice crystal imager, and ozone sondes – and describes stratospheric intrusions of sub-tropical air, upper tropospheric cirrus clouds, and aerosol layers linked to volcanic and wildfire emissions observed during the flights. These features are relevant for the vertical profile retrievals from FIRMOS-B radiances and for future radiative closure studies in preparation for the ESA FORUM mission. The paper is currently under open review at Earth System Science Data (discussion open until 26 October 2026); the preprint and the underlying datasets, publicly available via the HEMERA datacenter, can be found at the link below.

Ghysels, M., Palchetti, L., Viciani, S., Belotti, C., Barucci, M., Berthet, G., Asher, E., Hall, E., Fritz, A., Afchine, A., Rolf, C., Kuhn, T., Stopford, C., Hauchecorne, A., Amarouche, N., Durry, G., Samake, J.-C., Kalnajs, L. E., Deshler, T., Del Bianco, S., and Pettinari, P.: The ATMOSFER campaign: synergistic observations for the preparation of the ESA FORUM mission, Earth Syst. Sci. Data Discuss. [preprint], in review, 2026. https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2026-557