The mission of the Department of Energy (DOE) is to provide an environmentally safe, economically sound, and politically secure energy future for the nation. The Department is now engaged in a major effort to define a National Energy Strategy that will accomplish this mission. The possibility of global climate change resulting from energy production is an issue central to this strategy.
During the past decade, DOE has carried forward a focused research program to examine the greenhouse effect. This program has addressed the full range of issues
related to carbon dioxide (
) and other important greenhouse gases. The mission of the program has been to estimate the future levels and rate of increase
in atmospheric and greenhouse gases and to determine potential effects on climate and biota. This information is required to support scientifically based
energy policy options which can prevent, mitigate, or adapt to potential global warming. The thrust of the past decade of DOE research has been to:
change
on plants, crops, and ecosystems.
The research findings of this program are presented in a series of State-of-the-Art reports (DOE 1985), individual technical reports, and the scientific literature. (A listing of the publications of the DOE research program is updated twice a year. The listing is available from the Department of Energy, Atmospheric and Climate Research Division, ER-76, Washington, D.C. 20545.)
Scientific and public interest in the greenhouse effect has increased dramatically over the last two years. Simultaneous arguments are being made to initiate both immediate energy policy action and careful research to address this important scientific question before limiting our energy options. Defining an appropriate response to the concern of global climate change is a major challenge given the present uncertainties associated with predictions of the magnitude and timing of such a change.
In response to this challenge, the Office of Energy Research has developed an initiative called "Atmospheric Radiation Measurement" (ARM), which is designed to improve the treatment of cloud radiative forcing in General Circulation Models (GCMs). This initiative was selected after a careful review of the most critical gaps in the knowledge needed to improve the predictive accuracy of climate models. Together with the complementary scientific efforts of other federal agencies, the DOE program is intended to provide more accurate predictions of climate effects.
The ARM Program tackles the key problems of developing both the scientific data and the analytical approach needed to link quantitatively changes in atmospheric composition to changes in radiative forcing. The program emphasizes cloud radiative forcing, which has been identified by the Committee on Earth Sciences as one of the most critical elements for understanding induced global climate change.
The challenge of the program is to characterize the physical and dynamical structure of the column with sufficient accuracy to significantly improve the modeling of critical phenomena. Experimentally, this will entail measuring the radiative fluxes, temperature, atmospheric composition, and wind velocity at four to six highly instrumented sites. Data from ground-based sensors, arrayed around each base site, will relate the information collected in the column to the requirements for modeling an area the size of a GCM grid cell.
This approach will allow quick implementation, flexible measurement techniques, and the economical use of resources. It will also provide the opportunity to exploit new instrumental and scientific advances as they occur. It is important to begin this effort immediately. Although there will be important intermediate results of the program, we estimate that ten years of study will be necessary to support the continued development of models which address problems of pa-rameterization in the climate models.
The scientific roots for ARM are found in the Climate Diagnostics element of the DOE Carbon Dioxide Research Program. The objectives of the Climate Diagnostics element are to:
The ARM Initiative has been motivated primarily by results from the first objective and may be considered an extension of the third objective. The technology necessary to achieve the goals of ARM is available now. This document describes the critical elements of the DOE plan to deploy the ARM experiment and to initiate observations at the first site by April 1992.
The document is organized as follows. The Background Section provides the technical background in previous modeling and measurement intercomparisons that led to the ARM Initiative. The Program Requirements Section highlights the scientific needs associated with understanding and predicting global climate change that emerged from the intercomparisons. The Experimental Design Section describes the practical design for the ARM experiment, which responds to the key features of the needs identified in the Requirements Section.
The management strategy and implementation for ARM are discussed in the Management Plan Section as is the interaction with several key national and international climate research programs which will be continuing and beginning during the proposed ARM timeline. The ARM Program demands, and will work for, a strong synergistic relationship with these programs in order to achieve the program goals.
