Draft:EUROTRAC

EUROTRAC was a joint was a joint European scientific research programme within the EUREKA Framework. EUROTRAC is the acronym for The European Experiment on Transportation and Transformation of Environmentally Relevant Trace Constituents in the Troposphere over Europe.

EUROTRAC was accepted as a EUREKA project at the second EUREKA Ministerial Conference held in Hannover (Germany) in November 1985. After a two-year definition phase, the work started in January 1988, and ended in 1995. At the peak of the programme, it included more than 250 research groups from 24 European countries and its budget exceeded 16 million ECU per year.

Focus areas
EUROTRAC studied the impact of human activities on the troposphere over Europe, focusing on:


 * The chemistry and transport of photo-oxidants (especially ozone) in the troposphere
 * The processes leading to formation of acidity in the atmosphere
 * The uptake and release of atmospheric trace substances by the biosphere.

EUROTRAC was an interdisciplinary programme involving field experiments and campaigns, laboratory studies, comprehensive model developments and simulations, emission estimation, studies of biosphere / atmosphere exchange and the development of advanced instruments for laboratory and field measurements.

EUROTRAC was a science-driven, "bottom-up" research programme, where the scientist involved in the programme proposed research projects. The project proposals were evaluated by the Scientific Steering Committee (SSC) and approved by the Internation Executive Committee (IEC). Since EUROTRAC was not centralised, the scientific groups had to seek their own funding, usually from their own national funding authorities. Some projects were financed by the European Commission.

Organisation
EUROTRAC was headed by an International Executive Committee (IEC). IEC consisted of one representative from each member country. IEC the subproject proposals and appointed members to the Scientific Steering Committee (SSC). SSC reviewed the subproject proposals and the progress and results of the individual subprojects. The International Scientific Secretariat (ISS) coordinated the EUROTRAC project. The ISS was run from Fraunhofer Institute for Atmospheric Research, located in Garmisch-Partenkirchen (Germany).