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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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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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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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ARM Facility Insights at the 2016 AMS Annual Meeting
Sunday, January 10, marked the beginning of the 96th Annual Meeting of the American Meteorological Society, where over 3,000 researchers will congregate in New Orleans to present on topics and learn more about research relating to the theme “Earth System Science in Service to Society.” Once again, ARM users and scientists will share results and…
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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.
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From the Mountains to the Prairies to the Oceans White with Foam
The U.S. Department of Energy has selected five field campaigns to take place from April 2016 through April 2019 reaching from the Argentine mountains to the Southern Ocean near Antarctica. These efforts will provide insight into the impact of land and oceans on climate.
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Delineating the Sharp Edges of Clouds, Down to the Micrometer
Results of a study using the HOLODEC, an instrument developed in part with funding from the ARM Facility, were recently published in Science.