Establishing a global measurement infrastructure for observing the Earth's atmosphere with the help of civil aviation

IAGOS stands for "In-service Aircraft for a Global Observing System" and is used for worldwide research into the Earth's atmosphere with the aid of civil aviation.

The first IAGOS aircraft, the Airbus A340-300 "Viersen", has been in service since July 8, 2011. On that day, Lufthansa became the world's first airline to launch this new type of long-term research into the Earth's atmosphere by scheduled flight in cooperation with the Jülich Research Center. The instrument package, which was newly developed especially for this purpose, is lightweight, robust and virtually maintenance-free. Atmospheric trace substances and cloud particles are routinely recorded at cruising altitude.

In 2013, the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) included the IAGOS project in its national roadmap for research infrastructure. According to the Science Council commissioned by the BMBF, the continuous and global recording of atmospheric data such as oxygen, carbon or nitrogen will close an important gap in knowledge in order to make more accurate climate predictions.

In 2015 and 2022, the Lufthansa Group expanded its commitment to the climate research project IAGOS and equipped another Lufthansa aircraft with special measuring devices in each case.