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Deciphering Cold-Air Outbreaks
A 2020 ARM field campaign in Norway will investigate critical but little-understood extrusions of cold air over warm waters ARM instruments on Norway’s Andøya and Bear islands will track and measure cloud regimes prompted by cold-air outbreaks sweeping southward from the ice edge of the Arctic. Map data: Google. In the northernmost reaches of Norway,…
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Small Is Beautiful: Part 1
Researchers test instruments and record unique data by flying tethered balloon systems over the Southern Great Plains This is the first article in a series about small campaigns held in 2019 at ARM’s Southern Great Plains atmospheric observatory. A tethered balloon is strung with instruments in the summer of 2019 at ARM’s Southern Great Plains…
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When the Sun and Moon Are Not the Only Circles in the Sky
Using ARM total sky images, a university team fine-tunes its algorithm to detect ice halos A 22-degree halo—named for its radius around the sun or moon—appears in an all-sky camera image over the University of Minnesota, Morris, campus. Photos are courtesy of Sylke Boyd, University of Minnesota, Morris. When Sylke Boyd needed help finishing a…
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Jason Tomlinson: Eyes to the Sky
The ARM Aerial Facility engineering manager studies the world of clouds and aerosols This is the second in a series of periodic profiles on scientists who create and apply ARM data. ARM Aerial Facility Engineering Manager Jason Tomlinson is based at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in southeastern Washington state. Photo is courtesy of Tomlinson. During…
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Alaskan Campaign Digs Into Snowmelt and Surface Effects on Local Energy Balance
Snow ALbedo eVOlution campaign is taking place at ARM’s North Slope of Alaska observatory This video explains the Snow ALbedo eVOlution (SALVO) field campaign taking place on the North Slope of Alaska. Video is by Trevor Grams, University of Alaska, Fairbanks (UAF; now at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration). Near the edge of the…
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SHEBA: Still Serving Science
An arctic field campaign in the late 1990s set the stage for present-day research investigating shrinking ice cover, warming temperatures, and other changes In the summer of 1998, during the yearlong Surface Heat Budget of the Arctic Ocean (SHEBA) field campaign, then-graduate student Bonnie Light paused in a melt pond. She was recording upwelling and…
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Bart Geerts: Observer and Modeler Takes the Lead
University of Wyoming researcher is poised to launch his first ARM field campaign This is the first in a series of periodic profiles on scientists who create and apply ARM data. In the summer of 2018, Bart Geerts pauses near the Andøya Space Center Observatory in Norway. Below, at the edge of the Norwegian Sea,…
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UEC Profile: Aerosol Hunter
A veteran scientist investigates how to better explain, detect, and measure the carbonaceous aerosols that influence atmospheric processes This is the seventh article in a series of 2019 profiles on members of the ARM User Executive Committee (UEC). Aerosol researcher Arthur Sedlacek brings a dual perspective—active scientist and instrument mentor—to ARM’s User Executive Committee. Photo…
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RACORO’s Durable Data
Measurements from a 2009 ARM field campaign continue to enlarge what we know about boundary layer cloud microphysics The U.S. Navy Twin Otter research aircraft, on loan from the Center for Interdisciplinary Remotely-Piloted Aircraft Studies (CIRPAS), took to the skies during the RACORO field campaign in 2009. Ten years after it began, an investigation of…
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Getting Ready for Science on Ice
Hopeful and hardy, researchers prepare for a yearlong field campaign in the central Arctic For a year starting in the fall of 2019, the research icebreaker R/V Polarstern will be the main observatory during a logistically complex international arctic campaign. The Multidisciplinary Drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate (MOSAiC) field campaign is being…