ARM’s New Research on Climate Spans the Globe

Each year, the ARM Climate Research Facility receives proposals to use key components of the Facility for extended or intensive field campaigns to improve understanding of atmospheric processes that are relevant to regional and global climate. The Department of Energy has selected six field campaigns to take place from 2015 through most of 2019. These new efforts kick off in the summer of 2015 at the Southern Great Plains (SGP) site.

ARM Support for the PECAN Experiment, Enhanced Soundings for Local Coupling Studies, and ARM Airborne Carbon Measurements VI

A large fraction of yearly precipitation on the U.S. Great Plains, the world’s breadbasket, comes from the movement of air at night, but the mechanisms for that movement are poorly understood. The Plains Elevated Convection at Night (PECAN), supported by the National Science Foundation, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and National Aeronautics and Space Administration, is a large field campaign encompassing most of western and central Kansas, northern Oklahoma, and southern Nebraska that the U.S. Department of Energy will collaborate with through the ARM Support for the PECAN (AS-PECAN) Experiment. The ARM SGP site forms the southeastern cornerstone for the PECAN campaign to understand and accurately simulate the processes that start and maintain air movement and precipitation at night. Measurements taken during June and July 2015 will serve as the leading data set for climate prediction studies by scientists worldwide.

Principal Investigator: Dave Turner, NOAA

Also at the SGP site in the summer of 2015, the Enhanced Soundings for Local Coupling Studies will take frequent atmospheric profiles. These high-resolution data will improve understanding of how the lowest levels of the atmosphere are affected by the properties of the land surface within a day. Matching the diurnal development of the atmosphere is a fundamental yet extremely complex task for atmospheric models. The results of these studies will also inform how ARM could better measure interactions between the land and the atmosphere.

Principal Investigator: Craig Ferguson, State University of New York

In addition, the SGP site will see continuation of the ARM Airborne Carbon Measurements campaigns for ARM-ACME VI beginning in October 2015 and continuing for a year. For this effort, the Cessna 206 will continue to take regular carbon measurements over the site. Because carbon plays such an important role in the atmosphere, ARM has been measuring and analyzing its presence at the SGP site for more than six years. These measurements will be used to improve understanding of how land-atmosphere interactions and changes in water and energy influence carbon concentrations. This work will also shed light on how greenhouse gases are transported in the atmosphere.

Principal Investigator: Sebastien Biraud, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Layered Atlantic Smoke Interactions with Clouds

Under the Layered Atlantic Smoke Interactions with Clouds (LASIC) effort, ARM’s first mobile facility (AMF1) and its atmospheric profiling equipment will travel to isolated Ascension Island between South America and Africa. This year-long campaign (April 2016 to March 2017) will study how smoke is transported in the atmosphere and its effect on low clouds. Southern Africa produces more smoke from biomass burning than any other place on earth. This smoke is transported through the atmosphere across the Atlantic, but its path and how that aerosol changes as it is transported have never been verified with comprehensive surface-based measurements. The results of this deployment will provide a stringent test for global aerosol models used to predict climate change.

Principal Investigator: Paquita Zuidema, University of Miami

Macquarie Island Cloud and Radiation Experiment

Farther to the south and west in the Southern Hemisphere, ARM will deploy a variety of ground-based instrumentation to Macquarie Island in the southwest Pacific Ocean, halfway between New Zealand and Antarctica, for an off-site campaign. The Macquarie Island Cloud and Radiation Experiment (MICRE) will measure clouds, aerosols, and their radiative effects in the remote Southern Ocean region, an area often prone to large errors when it comes to modeling regional and global responses to climate change. The two-year effort (March 2016 to March 2018) will characterize the full seasonal cycle and variability. The experiment will be conducted in coordination with the Australian Antarctic Division and the Australian Bureau of Meteorology.

Principal Investigator: Roger Marchand, University of Washington