News Tips from 2012 EGU General Assembly

 
Published: 16 April 2012
Photo courtesty of lichtraum - Panoramio
The ARM Facility is attending the 2012 European Geophysical Union General Assembly at the Austria Center in Vienna for the first time.

VIENNA — The U.S. Department of Energy’s Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Climate Research Facility is the world’s most comprehensive outdoor laboratory and data archive for research related to atmospheric processes that affect Earth’s climate. At the European Geophysical Union (EGU) General Assembly 2012 in Vienna, find out how scientists use the ARM Facility to study the interactions between clouds, aerosol, precipitation, and radiation for improving regional and global climate models. Below are a few highlights; see our presentation page for more links.

From mountains to models
Five years ago, the ARM Facility joined European collaborators in an ambitious campaign called COPS—the Convective Orographic Precipitation Study. Their goal was to advance the quality of forecasts of orographically-induced convective precipitation by 4-dimensional observations and modeling of its life cycle. How have they fared? A special issue of the QJRMS in January 2011 contained 21 papers about COPS. A second special issue on COPS results is in preparation for the Meteorologische Zeitschrift (MetZ).

• AS1.21, EGU2012-11186. COPS science questions revisited: What have we learned so far from COPS? A. Behrendt, Tuesday, 24 April, 10:30am, Room 7

Raising the bar for climate observations

The ARM Facility recently completed a $60 million capital investment at its sites around the world. Scanning radars, several types of lidars, an array of aerosol instruments, and airborne cloud probes provide scientists the latest technology for studying the interactions among clouds, aerosol, and precipitation. Data from these new instruments permit the world’s most detailed documentation of cloud characteristics and their evolution ever obtained.

• AS3.12, EGU2012-6663. New ARM Measurements of Clouds, Aerosols, and the Atmospheric State, J. Mather, Wednesday, 25 April, 10:45am, Room 10

A sea change for climate science
In 2012, the ARM Facility announced plans to establish two new remote climate observation sites—one in the harsh arctic environs of Oliktok Point, Alaska, and the other in the mild marine climate of the Azores. Operational in 2013, these sites will provide the climate science community with never-before available long-term measurements from the northeastern Atlantic Ocean and coastal Arctic sea ice.

• Please visit the ARM Facility exhibit in booth #60 for more information or contact Lynne Roeder in the press room.

Visit the ARM Climate Research Facility in Booth #60 to learn about:

Research Sites Around the World
The ARM Facility provides a global infrastructure for obtaining real observations of the natural atmosphere—clouds, aerosol, precipitation, and solar and thermal energy. Continuous data collections are available from heavily instrumented fixed sites in Oklahoma and Alaska in the United States, and from Australia, Manus Island, and Nauru Island in the tropical western Pacific. These are supplemented with measurements obtained by mobile and aerial platforms with nearly identical instrumentation. Two new sites in the Azores and Oliktok Point, Alaska, will be operational in 2013. This coverage provides scientists with data for studying climate processes at both regional and global scales.

Field Campaigns for Key Data
Researchers regularly conduct field campaigns to augment routine data acquisitions and to test and validate new instruments. These can take place at the fixed sites or in combination with ARM’s mobile and aerial facilities. For example, ARM’s two mobile facilities have completed field campaigns in the United States, Africa, Germany, the Azores, India, and the Maldives. They are currently preparing for yearlong deployments back in the United States—one at Cape Cod National Seashore in Massachusetts for an aerosol study, and one on a commercial cargo ship for measurements of marine boundary layers clouds during routine transits between California and Hawaii.

Free Data—for Everyone
Yes, free! The ARM Data Archive stores more than 2000 types of datastreams collected through routine operations and periodic field campaigns. All data are subjected to rigorous quality review and then made freely available through the Internet for anyone to use. This free access to climate data is an exception to the rule among many climate research organizations.

Vision
The ARM Climate Research Facility is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science, Office of Biological and Environmental Research. Its vision is to provide a detailed and accurate description of the earth atmosphere in diverse climate regimes to resolve the uncertainties in climate and earth system models toward the development of sustainable solutions for the Nation’s energy and environmental challenges.