ACTRiS calibration center

ACTRiS World Calibration Center for VOCs

Our group is the lead unit of the Centre for Reactive Gases in Situ Measurements (CiGas) as a part of the Aerosol, Clouds and Trace Gases Research Infrastructure (ACTRIS). The key mission of CiGas is focused on offering the current state-of-the art operational support to the ACTRIS National facilities to assure their continuous long-term atmospheric measurements of VOCs. This includes a vast number of activities to guide research, through development, and implementation of new and advanced technologies for future user needs, to achieve sustainable and traceable high-quality data with well-defined uncertainty. Being the lead unit among in total six CiGas-units, we are responsible for the general coordination between all parts, including the head office, the service and access management unit, the data center, as well as the central and national facilities, and users. As a unit specialized in the analysis of VOCs and as a long-time experienced operator of the national facility SAPHIR, we also provide training and consultancy for ACTRIS operators and/or external users in the conductance of measurements of anthropogenic and biogenic VOCs by on-line and/or off-line GC-FID/MS and PTR-MS, as well as data acquisition and evaluation under strict procedures of quality assurance and quality control. All these aspects covered by training and consultancy are included in the guidelines for measurements and standard operating procedures developed and updated by the CiGas team. In addition, as a calibration center for VOCs, we also assure, first, the state-of-the-art traceability to international scales of the measurements of ACTRIS by facilitating calibration support and provision of working standards and target gases for National facilities and users and, second, the quality of the data and compatibility of the measurements by promoting station performance tests (e.g., through audit processes), intercomparisons, and reviewing of data. Finally, we are also involved in the development of new instrumentation for long-term monitoring of VOCs, whose performance is within the regulations of quality for ACTRIS measurements.