EUFAR: the European Facility for Airborne Research

Since its creation in 2000, the European Facility for Airborne Research, EUFAR, evolved into the central network for the airborne research community in Europe. From the beginning until 2018, EUFAR has received funding within the different Framework Programmes of the European Commission. In January 2018, EUFAR became an AISBL (international non-profit association under Belgian law) establishing EUFAR as an independent legal structure and ensuring EUFAR’s future.

Via EUFAR Transnational Access, a range of aircraft and instrumentation has been made available to European researchers who do not have access to a suitable research infrastructure in their home country. This has provided both a comprehensive range of atmospheric in-situ measurements together with a variety of remote-sensing instruments and hyperspectral imagers for studies of land or water surfaces, vegetation etc. Examples of successful TA activities will be shown. In order that researchers should continue in future to have access to the most appropriate research aircraft and instrumentation to meet their science objectives independently of EC funding, EUFAR is now working to develop principles of Open Access (OA).

EUFAR supports Expert Working Group meetings to exchange knowledge and promote best practice across the range of activities involved in airborne research. These cover, for example, instrument developments, data processing software and the scientific uses of airborne data. Via its previous EC funding, EUFAR has been able to support training courses for early-career researchers to introduce them to the use of airborne measurements for environmental research. Where possible, new software tools resulting from these activities are provided openly via the EUFAR website. EUFAR also promotes access to its members' data from airborne platforms and instruments and will be working with the AERIS data centre in France to provide a data portal to assist with this.

This presentation will give an overview of EUFAR, its recent achievements and future plans.