LAERO welcomes Aristide Akpo and Venance Donnou

Aristide Akpo and Venance Donnou from the Abomey-Calavi University (ACU) in Benin arrived in Toulouse at the beginning of October for a two-month secondment at the Aerology Laboratory (LAERO) as part of the INSA project.

Aristide Akpo is a Full Professor specialising in atmospheric physics and meteorology. Over the last 15 years he has worked in close collaboration with several scientists from the Aerology Laboratory in Toulouse, including Corinne Galy-Lacaux and Claire Delon. Thanks to his involvement in the AMMA (African Monsoon Multidisciplinary Analysis, 2016) project and DACCIWA (Dynamics–Aerosol–Chemistry–Cloud Interactions in West Africa) project, several campaigns focused on urban pollution in African cities have been conducted in Cotonou, as well as long term surveys of atmospheric deposition in rural Benin.

Venance Donnou completed his PhD in 2019 and specialises in Atmospheric Physics and Renewable Energies. In July 2016, he participated in the campaign to measure atmospheric parameters in Savè, in central Benin, as part of the DACCIWA project. During this campaign, Venance worked alongside Claire Delon to perform nitric oxide (NO) and ammonia (NH3) flux measurements on different soils.

While in Toulouse, Aristide and Venance have been working on updating and interpreting a detailed database of gas measurements for 8 sites across Africa, six of which are a part of the INDAAF (International Network to study Deposition and Atmospheric chemistry in Africa) network. The sites span West and Central Africa, and include dry savannah, humid savanna, and forest environments (Banizoumbou, Nigeria; Katibougou, Mali; Lamto, Ivory Coast; Djougou, Benin; Zoétélé, Cameroun; Bomassa, Congo; Dahra, Senegal and Mbita, Kenya). Measurements include concentrations of NH3, NO2, HNO3, SO2 and O3.

At the 6 INDAAF sites, trends in NH3 and NO2 concentrations were studied between 1998 and 2015 (Ossohou et al., 2019, 2020, 2021 in preparation). Aristide and Venance are exploring these same gases for the period 2015-2020, as well as O3 and SO2 and HNO3 for the period 1998-2020.