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Smoke From African Fires: Studying its Impact on Low Clouds
Over a thousand miles off the coast of Angola in West Africa in the South Atlantic Ocean, Ascension Island will be ground zero for the newest field campaign by the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Climate Research Facility—Layered Atlantic Smoke Interactions with Clouds (LASIC).
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25 Years of ARM Shows Benefits of Having Heads in the Clouds
.alignright, .alignleft { clear:none; } How ARM transformed the culture of atmospheric science This is the first article in a series about the first 25 years of the ARM Climate Research Facility. A monograph published online this spring by the American Meteorological Society tells the history—25 years of it so far—of what is now called…
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The Truth About Shallow Clouds: Science Goes Airborne in Oklahoma
Starting in late April, and then again in August, researchers will conduct two separate month-long periods of intensive observation at ARM’s Southern Great Plains megasite to gather detailed measurements of processes affecting the life cycle of shallow cumulus clouds for the Holistic Interactions of Shallow Clouds, Aerosols, and Land-Ecosystems, or HI-SCALE, in an aerial campaign.
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“Change Is in the Air” as Scientists Evaluate Data Collection with Unmanned Aircraft
For decades, studying Earth’s atmosphere meant gathering data with instruments based on land, lofted by balloons, or flown overhead in various types of aircraft, but change is “in the air” as increasingly popular unmanned aerial systems (UASs), such as lightweight miniature airplanes, prove useful for automating data collection. In April, the Evaluating Routine Atmospheric Sounding…
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Scientists Left with “Wealth of Information” as Green Ocean Amazon Campaign Closes
Data help reveal urban impacts on the Amazon’s pristine atmosphere, precipitation, and cloud formation Green Ocean Amazon, GoAmazon, extended through the wet and dry seasons from January 2014 through December 2015, before packing activities began. Slogging through mud, Amon Haruta and Vagner Castro shielded sensitive climate instruments from the torrential rain. Working with colleagues in…
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Next-Generation Aerosol Observing System Prepares to Deploy to Alaska
Portable laboratory will gather critical Arctic climate data Scott Smith, an ARM research engineer, shows off the new Aerosol Observing System to ARM Technical Director Jim Mather, Southern Great Plains Facility Manager Nicki Hickmon—where the facility will be tested before it is deployed to Alaska—and Aerosol Measurement Science Group Co-chair Allison McComiskey. To build accurate…
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Tracking Clouds Down Under
While penguins and seals are the main inhabitants of Macquarie Island, a remote grassy outcrop which lies about half-way between New Zealand and Antarctica, they will soon be joined by a suite of instruments from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Climate Research Facility. These instruments will measure surface radiative fluxes…
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MAGIC Continues to Inspire Insights
Because they cover so much of the Earth and reflect large amounts of sunlight, marine clouds play an especially critical role in climate and climate research. However, most non-satellite investigations of such clouds have been relatively short-term (~one month) in fairly small regions. The Marine ARM GPCI Investigation of Clouds (MAGIC) field campaign changed that…
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Scientists Study Clouds’ Impact on West Antarctic Ice Melt
It has been half a century since the West Antarctic atmosphere has been studied in detail and an “unprecedented deployment” of instruments from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Climate Research Facility is now delivering data that could help scientists understand how clouds affect melting glaciers.
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Scientists Find Mostly Liquid Particulates over Amazon Rainforest
When scientists participating in the GoAmazon 2014/2015 experiment measured the physical state of aerosols drifting over the Amazon rain forest, they found that 80 percent of the time those particles were liquid. Their findings, published in Nature Geoscience December 7, were a surprising departure from the results of a previous study.