The ACTIVE (Aerosol and chemical transport in tropical convection) Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) funded consortium project, combined field measurements and a range of modelling tools at different scales to address questions related to the composition of the tropical tropopause layer (TTL).

Field measurements were conducted in Darwin, Australia in two phases: November-December 2005 (pre-monsoon convection), in collaboration with the SCOUT-O3 project funded by the European Commission, and January-February 2006 (monsoon convection), in collaboration with the US/Australian TWPICE project.

ACTIVE utilised the Australian Egrett aircraft operated by Airborne Research Australia (ARA) and the NERC Dornier 228 operated by the British Airborne Research and Survey Facility (ARSF) to measure chemical species and aerosol in the inflow and outflow of tropical storms. Cloud-scale and large-scale modelling studies assisted in the interpretation of the measurements to distinguish the different contributions to the TTL composition. The dataset contains the before-mentioned aircraft measurement as well as ozonesondes.

Institutions involved in ACTIVE include

The University of Manchester, UK.
The University of Cambridge, UK.
The University of Wales at Aberystwyth, UK.
The University of York, UK.
The Deutsches Zentrum fur Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR), Germany.
The Forschungzentrum Julich (FZJ), Germany.
The York University, Canada.
The Bureau of Meteorology (BOM), Australia.
The Airborne Research, Australia (ARA).