‘World first’ 10,000km expedition launched

Scientific research vessel Jaywun, built at the Freire Shipyard in Vigo, Spain, is 47 metres long by 12 metres wide and has six laboratories on board.

The vessel has been fitted with advanced monitoring equipment supplied by the Cyprus Institute, a centre for air pollution and climate change research, and the German Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, which researches chemical processes on Earth.

The parties are working together to monitor air quality and climate change from the Atlantic Ocean to the Arabian Gulf, covering a distance of more than 10,000 kilometres.

The vessel will cross the Mediterranean Sea, Gulf of Suez, Red Sea, Gulf of Aden, Arabian Sea and Gulf of Oman, ending in the Arabian Gulf and Abu Dhabi waters before the end of the year.

“This remarkable ship measurement expedition is the start of an international collaboration that aims at collecting and analysing unique datasets from a region of the world that has yet been data-sparse, providing the basis for both scientific discovery and the underpinning of air quality policies,” said Dr Jos Lelieveld, managing director of the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry.