AMF Baseline Instruments
Instrument Suites
View the list of instruments used at each deployment.
Because each scientific deployment is a unique experiment designed to explore new climatic regions, the ARM Mobile Facility (AMF) baseline instruments will change to suit that region. The AMF has the ability to host instruments other than the baseline collection and was designed to collaborate with other agency experiments (particularly those with aircraft).
The following instruments represent available capabilities.
Aerosols
Atmospheric Profiling
- Balloon-borne Sounding System (SONDE)
- Microwave Radiometer Profiler (MWRP). The MWRP is a 12-channel version of the standard 2-channel Microwave Radiometer (MWR). A number of its 12 channels are included in the 50-60MHz range. These extra channels are used to retrieve a 5-minute temperature, vapor, and liquid water content profile to supplement the integrated water vapor and liquid water contents retrieved with the standard 2-channel MWR.
Clouds
- W-band (95 GHz) ARM Cloud Radar (WACR). This cloud radar operates at a higher frequency than the Millimeter Wavelength Cloud Radars at the permanent ARM sites, which are 35-GHz systems. The advantage of the 95-GHz radar is its smaller size and capability to observe Mie scattering when drizzle and larger droplets are observed. The AMF cloud radar is equipped with a full spectral processor.
- Microwave Radiometer (MWR)
- Micropulse Lidar (MPL)
- Narrow Field of View (NFOV)
- Vaisala Ceilometer (VCEIL)
- Total Sky Imager
Radiometers
- Atmospheric Emitted Radiance Interferometer (AERI). In the future, the AERI may be modified to view the infrared spectrum emitted by the surface (especially if the instrument is deployed over an ocean surface) in addition to the atmosphere; this modification would result in the AERI being more like the Marine AERI (MAERI), which was developed by the University of Wisconsin - Madison for use in NASA projects.
- Infrared Thermometer (IRT)
- Multifilter Rotating Shadowband Radiometer (MFRSR)
- Broad-Band Instruments
- Pyranometers
- Pyrgeometers
- Pyrheliometers
- Radiometric Instrument Systems (groupings of individual broadband instruments at sites)
