A stark reminder of our climate reality
This August, Greece has once again been under siege by devastating wildfires. In Patras, the impact was immediate: The Institute of Chemical Engineering Sciences of the Foundation for Research and Technology - Hellas in Patras was forced to shut down entirely, bringing all activities to a halt, including the CleanCloud PIANO campaign. Our labs there close to the flames, with all the risk that it implies. Last year we also had another wildfire that firefighters literally stopped at the entrance of the Institute.

These fires are not isolated events. Climate change is intensifying them: longer droughts, hotter summers, and stronger winds are turning once rare disasters into recurring crises. Beyond the immediate destruction, the fires remind us how fragile our work and our collective future has become in the face of accelerating climate impacts.

Now, more than ever, research dedicated to understanding and protecting the well-being of our planet is of existential importance.This is at the heart of the EU-funded research project CleanCloud (Clouds and climate transitioning to post-fossil aerosol regime), comprised of 20 European research institutes with expertise in land- and space-based remote sensing, laboratory and in-situ atmospheric aerosol and cloud chamber experiments, and kilometer and large-scale aerosol, cloud, and climate modelling. CleanCloud, aims to quantify and understand regional and temporal effects of ACI-related processes, and how they will evolve in the transition to the post-fossil regime.

For more information, please check other CleanCloud videos on this channel, follow us on social media and visit our CleanCloud  website (https://projects.au.dk/cleancloud/cleancloud-project).

Acknowledgments: Funding was provided by the European Union’s Horizon Europe project “CleanCloud” (Grant agreement No. 101137639)