Supporting climate research to continuously enhance the knowledge about our atmosphere

CARIBIC stands for “Civil Aircraft for the Regular Investigation of atmosphere Based on an Instrument Container” and strives for the continuous research of climate change.

In 2004, the 340-600 “D-AIHE” started to operate as a flying data collector and research lab and has ever since flown more than 500 research flights. The flying research aircraft was part of identifying three unknown CFC which are mainly responsible for the ozone hole and its growing.

In the end of 2021, a further Lufthansa aircraft is supporting the project: the “D-AIXJ”, an A350-900 and baptized under the name “Erfurt” will start to collect valuable data on her routes departing from Munich. She will gather information in the so-called tropopause region which involves a height of around nine to twelve kilometers. Part of the preparation of the aircraft are Lufthansa, Lufthansa Technik, Airbus, Safran, Enviscope and Dynatec working together in a joint effort to support the research of our atmosphere. The Erfurt then is supposed to analyze more than 100 different trace gases, aerosol and cloud parameters. Such research flights allow a much more concrete and accurate measurement of data than for instance, satellites or ground-based measurement systems.