Major earth and space science meeting provides opportunities to highlight ARM activities
A year after going fully virtual for its annual meeting, the American Geophysical Union (AGU) welcomed attendees in person and remotely for its 2021 fall meeting.
The in-person part of AGU 2021 took place from December 13 to 17 in New Orleans, Louisiana. Scientific sessions and town halls also included virtual presenters and attendees.
AGU opened its online meeting platform a week earlier for virtual-only town halls.
AGU announced an attendance surpassing 22,000—more than 13,000 online and over 9,000 in New Orleans. When fully in person, AGU typically draws more than 25,000 attendees from over 100 countries, making it the world’s largest earth and space science meeting.
At least 125 AGU presentations showcased the scientific impact of data from the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) user facility. See the full list of reported presentations featuring ARM data.
ARM had a virtual booth and held informal meet-and-greet sessions on the Wonder videoconferencing platform with scientists leading ARM campaigns and activities.
ARM Technical Director Jim Mather gave an invited presentation in which he discussed how collaborations with measurement networks and individual investigators help advance ARM’s mission.
Registered AGU 2021 attendees can view posters and recordings until February 28, 2022, by logging in to the online meeting platform.
The Global Reach of ARM Data
Many of the ARM data featured during AGU came from the 2019–2020 Multidisciplinary Drifting Observatory of Arctic Climate (MOSAiC) expedition. MOSAiC observed the atmosphere, ocean, sea ice, biogeochemistry, and ecosystem in the central Arctic over a full year.
On the last day of AGU, MOSAiC co-coordinator Matthew Shupe led a set of four sessions looking at coupled processes in the central Arctic.
Shupe was the lead scientist for the MOSAiC ARM Mobile Facility deployment. At AGU, Shupe presented a poster about cloud-atmosphere impacts on the surface energy budget in the central Arctic.
Other ARM MOSAiC data users shared findings about seasonal variations of aerosol properties and the seasonal cycle of particles that initiate ice formation. Another user discussed how changes in wind properties might affect ice movement, upper-ocean currents, and trace gas concentration.
ARM users led a pair of sessions on aerosol, cloud, precipitation, and radiation studies over high-latitude oceans. The sessions included ARM data from MOSAiC and the following campaigns:
- the 2019–2020 Cold-Air Outbreaks in the Marine Boundary Layer Experiment (COMBLE) in northern Norway
- the 2016–2018 Macquarie Island Cloud and Radiation Experiment (MICRE)
- the 2017–2018 Measurements of Aerosols, Radiation, and Clouds over the Southern Ocean (MARCUS) campaign.
Researchers at AGU also tapped into ARM data from the 2018–2019 Cloud, Aerosol, and Complex Terrain Interactions (CACTI) campaign in Argentina. At least nine posters and oral presentations leaned on data from CACTI, which explored the life cycle of storm clouds in the Sierras de Córdoba mountain range. The area experiences some of the world’s biggest thunderstorms.
ARM Town Halls
One of the ARM-focused town halls provided updates on the upcoming Southeastern U.S. deployment of the third ARM Mobile Facility (AMF3).
ARM plans to start AMF3 operations in 2023, and the site selection process is building speed. AMF3 site science team lead Chongai Kuang said that, based on science-driven siting criteria, northern Alabama is the preferred region for the deployment. There is a top location of interest for the main site, but other sites are being considered.
Read more about the AMF3 town hall.
Two current ARM campaigns received their own town halls.
In the Upper Colorado River Basin, ARM’s Surface Atmosphere Integrated Field Laboratory (SAIL) campaign is happening at the same time as the NOAA-led Study of Precipitation, the Lower Atmosphere and Surface for Hydrometeorology (SPLASH). A SAIL/SPLASH town hall discussed the science goals of the two campaigns.
SAIL also was featured during a town hall about integrated research in mountainous hydroclimate within the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). Observations from ARM and DOE’s Watershed Function Scientific Focus Area will help SAIL researchers advance atmosphere-through-bedrock understanding of mountain hydrology.
Get more details on SAIL at AGU.
In the Houston, Texas, area, ARM is conducting the yearlong TRacking Aerosol Convection interactions ExpeRiment (TRACER) until September 2022. TRACER Principal Investigator Michael Jensen led a town hall about TRACER and related interagency campaigns around Houston.
The NASA air quality campaign TRACER-AQ took place in September 2021, right before the main TRACER campaign began. The National Science Foundation is supporting the Experiment of Sea Breeze Convection, Aerosols, Precipitation and Environment (ESCAPE), which is scheduled for summer 2022.
Jensen and his collaborators will share more about TRACER and its related campaigns during the American Meteorological Society (AMS) Annual Meeting in January 2022. AMS planned to hold the meeting in Houston with a virtual component, but it will be fully online because of COVID.
Artificial Intelligence in the Spotlight
Another AGU town hall explained how ARM data might tie into DOE’s Artificial Intelligence for Earth System Predictability (AI4ESP) initiative.
AI4ESP is a multi-laboratory effort exploring how to use artificial intelligence with observations and models to enhance earth system predictability. The effort will unite resources from two DOE Office of Science programs: Biological and Environmental Research (BER) and Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR).
Gary Geernaert, director of the Earth and Environmental Systems Sciences Division (EESSD) within BER, said that data from ARM and other DOE long-term field activities could be used to produce training data sets for machine learning.
“We expect those and other major modeling capabilities to be brought to bear on how AI4ESP will unfold,” said Geernaert.
Just before AGU, the AI4ESP team led a five-week workshop to collect knowledge from the scientific community for building a strategy that supports DOE’s goals. As proof of the community’s deep interest in this topic, the workshop had more than 740 participants from 178 institutions.
The AI4ESP team plans to publish a workshop report in spring 2022. Geernaert said that the report would inform EESSD’s 2023–2028 strategic plan and future funding opportunities.
More information about the workshop is on the AI4ESP website.
Enhance Your Research With ARM
For researchers new to DOE, AGU town halls and scientific sessions showed how they could work with ARM and other DOE entities.
During a town hall on collaborating with DOE user facilities, Colorado State University associate professor Christine Chiu shared her experience as an ARM data user for almost 20 years.
Another town hall focused on the Facilities Integrating Collaboration for User Science (FICUS) program. Through FICUS, researchers can submit one proposal to use the capabilities and expertise of multiple user facilities.
Alison Hatt, deputy of user services for the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL), shared tips for submitting successful user proposals. ARM and EMSL have an open joint proposal call through FICUS. The call closes February 10, 2022.
(In a separate call closing April 5, 2022, DOE is accepting preliminary proposals for ARM campaigns.)
As part of a session geared toward early career scientists in atmospheric chemistry, Shaima Nasiri, co-program manager for DOE’s Atmospheric System Research (ASR), recorded a presentation about funding opportunity announcements.
ASR funds research that uses BER-supported observations, including those from ARM, to improve understanding of atmospheric processes.
Learn more about the research town halls and early career session.
Award Winners
Among its 2021 award recipients, AGU honored five members of the ARM/ASR community:
- Venkatachalam (V.) Chandrasekar (AGU Fellow), Colorado State University
- Paul DeMott (AGU Fellow), Colorado State University
- Harindra Joseph Fernando (AGU Fellow), University of Notre Dame
- Kerri Pratt (Atmospheric Sciences Ascent Award), University of Michigan
- Nicole Riemer (Atmospheric Sciences Ascent Award), University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Welcome to Chicago
The 2022 AGU Fall Meeting is scheduled from December 12 to 16 in Chicago, Illinois. It is the first time that AGU will be in Chicago.