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Mike Jensen: Cloud Scientist, Modeler, and Storm Maven
A veteran ARM principal investigator is poised to lead a year of collecting novel convection data In March 2020, in the last days of live meetings before COVID-19 shutdowns, Mike Jensen paused during an ARM conference on airborne instrumentation at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Washington state. Photo by Andrea Starr, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.…
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Cloud Microphysics VAP Evaluation Data Available for MC3E Field Campaign
Cloud microphysical properties affect cloud radiative heating, precipitation formation, and aerosol-cloud interactions, among other important atmospheric processes. A value-added product (VAP) that calculates cloud microphysical properties now provides evaluation data for the 2011 Midlatitude Continental Convective Clouds Experiment (MC3E) in Oklahoma. The Improved MICROBASE Product with Uncertainties (MICROBASEKAPLUS) provides continuous, high time resolution profiles of…
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MICROARSCL Evaluation Data Released: Harnessing the Power of Radar Doppler Spectra
Four of the roughly 30 variables provided by MICROARSCL are shown here for a day in Barrow, Alaska. Since 2004, the ARM Climate Research Facility has collected continuous recordings of profiling radar Doppler spectra. These recorded spectra offer a powerful means for overcoming the dependency of radar measurements on particle size (proportional to the sixth…
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Forcing Data for MC3E Updated
Multi-scale domains for MC3E, with diameters of 300 km, 150 km, and 75 km. The red triangles denote sounding locations. The green diamonds denote the locations of scanning cloud radars. Large-scale forcing data from the Midlatitude Continental Convective Clouds Experiment (MC3E) have been revised based on the recent update to MC3E sounding data for improved…
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Ensemble Large-Scale Forcing Data for the MC3E Campaign Available
This image shows different precipitation rates from the ensemble data set. Ensemble forcing data from the Midlatitude Continental Convective Clouds Experiment (MC3E) were developed by considering uncertainties in precipitation observations using the analysis described in Zhang and Lin [1997] and Zhang et al. [2001]. MC3E was a major ARM field campaign conducted from April to…
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Rain Rates Provided by Radar in New Evaluation Product
a) Validation of rainfall totals against the Oklahoma Mesonet and b) a single time step showing the ability of the algorithm to capture rain rates from the convective line and trailing stratiform. Precipitation rates from cloud systems can give a fundamental insight into in-cloud processes. While rain gauges and disdrometers can give information at a…
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Convective Vertical Velocity Data Ready for Evaluation
A cross-section of the atmosphere over the Billings, Oklahoma, radar wind profiler (RWP) at 22:12 UTC on May 23, 2011. The x-axis shows the location of the RWP (-14.5 km) in relation to the SGP Central Facility (0 km). The y-axis shows height above the surface. The bar on the right-hand side shows reflectivity. Contours…
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New Radar Data Lead to New Value-Added Product
This sample KAZR-ARSCL plot shows data from the SGP on April 26, 2011. The top image shows the ‘reflectivity_best_estimate’ field, and the lower image shows cloud base and cloud top heights for all cloud layers detected on this day.The Ka-band ARM zenith radars (KAZRs) have replaced the long-serving millimeter-wavelength cloud radars (MMCRs). As a result,…
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New Evaluation Product Estimates Planetary Boundary Layer Height
Example quicklook plot from the VAP showing the sub-sampled potential temperature (black) and potential temperature lapse rate (red) from a single radiosonde along with the estimates of PBL height from the three methods. Click to enlarge. Planetary boundary layer (PBL) height (or mixing-layer depth) can vary significantly with time due to a number of factors,…