The mission of JOYCE is to improve our understanding of the emergence, development and decay of clouds in an environment with multiple, complex influences. For this, we operate an array of remote sensing and in-situ instruments to probe clouds within their environment with a high spatial-temporal resolution. The scientists at JOYCE develop and apply new measurement approaches and methodologies for quantifying the cloud environment, clouds and precipitation. Also, we perform model and satellite evaluation to assess weather and climate models, respectively to improve climate monitoring. 

The facility has been performing continuous ground-based remote sensing observations since 2011. State-of-the-art active and passive remote sensing instruments are combined with in-situ sensors to analyze microphysical cloud and precipitation processes as well as processes in the atmospheric boundary layer. These include temperature and humidity profiling measurements and measurements for obtaining horizontal and vertical winds including turbulence.  The applied instrumentation includes cloud radars, microwave radiometers, Doppler lidar, Raman Lidar (with water vapor and temperature profiling capability) among others. In addition, a 130 m meteorological tower, a permanently installed Vaisala radiosonde launching system and multiple radiation observations are operated continuously. An overview of the JOYCE instrumentation can be obtained here. The extensive long-term data set allows to characterize diurnal and seasonal patterns in a statistical way.

The observational platform at the Research Centre Jülich is located in an urbanized setting surrounded by forest, within rural lowlands amidst two large open lignite mines and agricultural areas (Coordinates 50.908°N, 6.413°E). It is operated jointly by University of Cologne and Research Center Jülich. JOYCE is situated on the rooftop of the Institute of Climate and Energy Systems Troposphere (ICE3) at 111m MSL. 

JOYCE as an ACTRIS National Facility

The University of Cologne, in collaboration with the Research Center Jülich, hosts different ACTRIS components.

ACTRIS aims to provide effective access to its data, resources and services to a broad user community to enable high quality Earth system research. Free and open access will benefit not only Europe as a centre of technology and science, but also environmental authorities and decision-makers, and ultimately citizens across Europe. 

Within the European Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC) ACTRIS, JOYCE is a National Facility for cloud remote sensing. The continuous observations are provided in near-real-time to the ACTRIS Cloudnet data portal, which provides a data processing and curation service for ground-based cloud remote sensing measurements. This includes centralized processing, quality control, provenance, data harmonization and archiving. The University of Cologne has committed to providing these data to ACTRIS for at least 10 years after the finalization of the ACTRIS implementation phase in 2026. Within ACTRIS-D ("Deutschland"), a BMBF-funded collaborative research initiative, a JOYCE upgrade was funded, e.g. with a Raman lidar and a dual-frequency cloud radar.

JOYCE Access

JOYCE offers access to a synergistic set of state-of-the-art measurements for the investigation of cloud and precipitation processes. Please contact us via email for specific requests concerning data not available through the ACTRIS Cloudnet data portal. Next to data access, JOYCE also provides the following access types: 

• virtual access to instrumentation - if you are interested in performing specific observations with existing parts of the JOYCE instrument array
• physical access with instrumentation - if you would like to set-up instruments in line with cloud & precipitation and/or ACTRIS research, in general
• educational outreach - if you would like to know more about JOYCE, ACTRIS or clouds and precipitation, e.g. with your school class, your university course or for the general public  

In case you are interested in obtaining access as listed above, please contact us via email.

JOYCE Reference

• Löhnert et al. (2015). JOYCE: Jülich Observatory for Cloud Evolution. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 96(7), 1157–1174. https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-14-00105.1

For more information on JOYCE-related science, please refer to the Research Group “Exploiting Observations in Meteorology”.