The Airborne Measurements of Charged Cloud and Aerosol (AMCCA) project will use the FAAM BAe-146 aircraft to make measurements of electric charge at stratiform cloud and dust aerosol layer edges, in conjunction radiosonde measurements of electric charge released from the University of Reading Atmospheric Observatory.

This project will investigate how the natural electric fields always present in the atmosphere affect cloud and aerosol processes. These include the increased sticking probability of colliding droplets which are charged, an additional electrical uplift force reducing the rate of dust deposition, and enhanced removal of charged dust and aerosol by water droplets. Such effects are known to occur in and around stratiform cloud and above and within atmospheric dust layers.

These flights will allow us to identify which in-cloud processes are affected by electric charge, and how dust size distributions relate to charge, which has never been quantified experimentally before.

AMCCA is a FAAM Research Runway project.