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Got the MAGIC in Me!
Editor’s note: Ernie Lewis, principal investigator for the Marine ARM GPCI Investigations of Clouds (MAGIC) field campaign, introduces us to some MAGIC participants. One of the great things about MAGIC for me has been the opportunity to meet and interact with many people I wouldn’t have otherwise met, from the ship’s crew to technicians to…
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You Will Be Missed, Mr. Samaras
Around the early 1990s, the U.S. Department of Energy set up the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Program to collect climate and weather-related observations from across the globe. One of its first sites—now sprawling over 143,000 square kilometers and harboring 33 suites of sophisticated instruments—is in Oklahoma. Around the same time, a man working by himself…
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Department of Energy Maintains Sophisticated Climate Research Facility… in Tornado Alley
“We’re talking about 500,000 square miles under the gun for severe weather,” warned CNN meteorologist Indra Petersons on Monday morning. “Today could be as bad as yesterday,” she added. It was May 20. Over the weekend, severe weather had already caused fatalities and a tornado alert was in place across five states, from Texas to…
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Searching for Elusive Plumes in the United States
Interview with scientists spearheading a research campaign: 120 flight hours through burning biomasses in the Pacific Northwest and Memphis this summer. From “flash” to “smoldering” to”‘aging”—I’m not talking about men or women. It is fires—specifically those from burning organic matter, also called ‘burning biomasses.’ Fires are sparked by a large number of causes, both natural…
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TCAP Updates: A New Instrument and Cold Weather
Editor’s note: Dr. Larry Berg is the lead scientist for the Two-Column Aerosol Project. The ARM Mobile Facility site, deployed at Truro, Massachusetts, is shown here in an earlier and warmer time of the year.We are back on Cape Cod for the second TCAP intensive operations period, which we abbreviate as IOP. The weather conditions…
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Seasickness in Spirit!
The images in this post are graphic and could very well be those of me on a boat. Eight years ago, as a first-year graduate student, I was participating in a week-long oceanographic research cruise just off the coast of southern California. A severe case of seasickness rendered me so nauseous and incapable of work…
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Now We’re Cruising
Editor’s note: As part of the preparations for the upcoming Marine ARM GPCI Investigations of Clouds (MAGIC) field campaign, principal investigator Ernie Lewis shares his news of the deployment installation. I was in Los Angeles again last week to see the successful installation of the MAGIC instruments aboard the Horizon Spirit! It was great to…
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Launch with Larry
The Two-Column Aerosol Project (TCAP) is now underway, and the instrumentation at the ARM Mobile Facility (AMF) is up and running at the Cape Cod National Seashore’s Highlands Center. The site is an excellent place for observing both clouds and aerosol (small particles ranging in size from nanometers to micrometers that are suspended in the…
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Raindrops and the Doppler Effect
Editor’s note: As part of the preparations for the upcoming Marine ARM GPCI Investigations of Clouds (MAGIC) field campaign, principal investigator Ernie Lewis discusses how radars use the Doppler effect to determine raindrop sizes and speeds. This illustration of the Doppler effect shows the change of wavelength caused by the motion of the source (in…
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Alphabet Soup: Radars for MAGIC
Editor’s note: As part of the preparations for the upcoming Marine ARM GPCI Investigations of Clouds (MAGIC) field campaign, principal investigator Ernie Lewis provided information about the types of radars that will be used during the campaign. The aerosol observing system (left) and AMF2 Operations van (right) will join a Ka-band radar and a specially…