Submitted Abstract
The funding request is submitted for a peer-reviewed publication of the outcome of a European collaborative project which spun off the AVALON space mission concept, initially proposed at the Alpbach 2010 Summer School on ‘New Space Missions for Climate Change’. Amongst the 4 competing mission proposals, AVALON was selected for further study during a follow-up workshop in Obergurgl, Austria, due to its innovative character and scientific objectives, centred on studying water vapour in the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere, a key region for climate change evaluation and relevant process studies.The Alpbach Summer School and the Obergurgl workshop involved the intensive collaboration of European early career scientists and engineers. The proposed manuscript is the fruit of this effort and significant further study and research over the last year and a half. The AVALON mission concept has successfully been presented and promoted at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting 2011, and has now gone through review at the Remote Sensing e-journal, receiving overall very positive feedback and some suggestions for revisions.Since the manuscript is to be published in an online open-access journal, we submit this funding request before final acceptance by the editor and submit the editor’s e-mail feedback under the category ‘offer of the printing house’.