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In 2012, the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Climate Research Facility begins outfitting two new remote climate observation sites at opposite ends of the climate spectrum—one in the harsh arctic environs of Oliktok Point, Alaska, and the other in the mild marine climate of the Azores, in the North Atlantic Ocean. Scientists will use measurements from the new observation sites to study the interactions between clouds and aerosols in these remote regions and how they impact the planet.

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Scientists use detailed state-of-the art radiative transfer models to understand the radiative impact of clouds and aerosols on the Earth's radiation budget, evaluate remote sensing retrievals of cloud and aerosol properties, and develop and evaluate simpler radiative transfer models for inclusion in cloud and climate models. The ARM suite of instruments measures all of the [...]

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The Continuous Baseline Microphysical Retrieval (MICROBASE) value-added product (VAP) has been released as an official ARM VAP. Data from April 1998 through December 2009 are now available for the Southern Great Plains, North Slope of Alaska, and Tropical Western Pacific sites. Historical updates will be provided whenever additional data become available. MICROBASE is a baseline [...]

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Deep Convective Systems (DCSs) have traditionally been divided into the deep convective precipitating portion and the non-precipitating anvil canopy. The former is important to the atmospheric hydrologic cycle because of the heavy precipitation in the convective cores (CC) and widespread precipitation in the stratiform rain (SR) regions, and the latter are dominant in the [...]

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The interaction of aerosols and clouds engenders a large measure of uncertainty in climate sensitivity and climate change. Metrics that quantify these interactions and associated radiative forcing estimates span a range that is too wide to be definitive for climate studies. We argue that a component of this uncertainty derives from the use of a [...]

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Scientists from around the world use data from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Climate Research Facility to study the interactions between clouds, aerosol, and radiation. At the American Meteorological Society’s Annual Meeting, held this year in New Orleans from January 23-27, scientists are presenting dozens of oral and poster sessions describing their research using data from the user facility.

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Between November 2010 and November 2011, a handful of meteorological instruments—including Doppler sodar, ultrasonic anemometers, and one of ARM's radar wind profilers—gathered massive amounts of data for the Columbia Basin Wind Energy Study. To ensure that the data collected represent conditions experienced by real wind plants, the instruments were placed next to an operating [...]

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Arctic clouds are strongly tied to Arctic sea ice loss. To find the strength of those ties, a team led by scientists at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory tested a prominent climate model with observed data and found that it significantly underestimates liquid water content in the Arctic single-layer mixed-phase clouds, which affect how much solar [...]

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The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is seeking a physical scientist to work in the Atmospheric Modeling and Analysis Division at the Office of Research and Development, National Exposure and Research Laboratory in North Carolina. This position is permanent full time, with an annual salary range of $70,906 to $109,611. Primary responsibilities include: Provide technical expertise for [...]

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The School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences (SoMAS) at Stony Brook University is currently accepting applications for a faculty position in atmospheric sciences. Successful candidates will be expected to develop an independent, externally funded research program, teach and direct research at undergraduate and graduate levels, and participate in school and university service. Candidates must have [...]

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Abstracts are being accepted for Session BG2.8: Remote Sensing and Data Assimilation in the Biogeosciences, which will take place during the 2012 European Geosciences Union General Assembly in Vienna, Austria, April 22-27. This session aims to bring together scientists developing remote sensing techniques, products, and models leading to strategies with a higher (bio-geophysical) impact on [...]

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The Cooperative Institute for Mesoscale Meteorological Studies (CIMMS) at the University of Oklahoma is currently seeking a research associate scientist for the National Severe Storms Laboratory’s (NSSL) Severe Weather Warning Applications and Technology Transfer (SWAT) group to develop scientific applications that will assist forecasters in the warning decision-making process for severe weather events. Responsibilities include acquiring [...]

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The long-term measurements that are being collected at the ARM Climate Research Facility sites provide a unique data set that can be used to look at trends in the atmospheric state or composition. While the ARM data record is too short for any trends to be considered as trends in climate, any trends do [...]

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The tiny 4-kilometer-by-6-kilometer island of Nauru is isolated in the equatorial Pacific Ocean with naught but a few small scattered islands for thousands of kilometers around. Thus, the ARM measurements made there are intended to represent the larger surrounding oceanic area. But decades of phosphate mining have left large barren karst fields as the predominant [...]

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The first-ever 4-dimensional ARM data product, called Mapped Moments to a Cartesian Grid (MMCG), is now available for testing by the science community. Covering all major precipitation events during the Midlatitude Continental Convective Clouds Experiment, the MMCG is derived from scanning C-band ARM precipitation radar (C-SAPR) data. This value added product (VAP) was [...]

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Aerosols—tiny particles in the air, like dust or soot—can affect clouds and precipitation by serving as cloud condensation nuclei (CCN), altering cloud microphysics and precipitation processes and modulating radiative and latent energy to change atmospheric dynamics and thermodynamics that dictate cloud development. These effects can either suppress or foster cloud and precipitation processes. Various effects [...]

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The Arctic is particularly sensitive to climate change, with potentially dramatic consequences for the regional ecosystem. Arctic mixed-phase clouds, comprising both ice and supercooled liquid water, have been observed to occur frequently in all seasons and persist for many days at a time. They have a large impact on the shortwave and longwave radiative transfer [...]

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Mixed-phase stratiform clouds have been demonstrated to be a major contributor to the surface radiative budget of the Arctic. Measurements of these clouds and the associated surface radiative flux densities are expanding. In this work, we utilize a variety of cloud and atmospheric measurements to derive the macro- and microphysical properties of mixed-phase [...]

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In the complex molecular mixer that is the atmosphere, some molecules dance with others and some are wallflowers, according to DOE scientists at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. The scientists focused on how a specific vapor, responsible for the aromatic scent of fir trees, forms carbon-containing particles that mix with certain carbon-containing acids in the atmosphere. [...]

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