ARM Best Estimate Data Sets Released for Eastern North Atlantic

Published: 20 July 2020

Relative humidity and surface precipitation from ARM's Eastern North Atlantic observatory in 2018 — ARMBEATM relative humidity (top) and surface precipitation (bottom) are shown from ARM’s Eastern North Atlantic (ENA) atmospheric observatory in 2018.

The Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) user facility provides tailored datastreams known as ARM Best Estimate (ARMBE) data products for use in the evaluation of global earth system models (Xie et al. 2010). Two ARMBE data sets are now available for the years 2014 through 2018 at ARM’s Eastern North Atlantic (ENA) atmospheric observatory. The ARM Best Estimate Atmospheric Measurements (ARMBEATM) data set contains basic atmospheric quantities, and ARM Best Estimate Cloud Radiation (ARMBECLDRAD) provides cloud and radiation quantities.

Cloud fraction at ARM's Eastern North Atlantic observatory is derived from ARM cloud product — ARMBECLDRAD cloud fraction (top) on July 1, 2018, at the ENA is derived from the Ka-Band ARM Zenith Radar Active Remote Sensing of Clouds (KAZR-ARSCL) product (bottom).

An ARMBE product assembles quantities that are both well observed by ARM over many years and are often used in model evaluation into one data set. These products consist of hourly averages and thus have temporal resolution comparable to a typical resolution used in climate model output.

Scientists can use the ENA ARMBEATM and ARMBECLDRAD data sets now. Find more information about ARMBE data products on the ARMBE web page.

Feedback and use of the data are always welcomed. If you have questions/suggestions, please contact Shuaiqi Tang or Shaocheng Xie.

Users can access the ENA data sets for ARMBEATM and ARMBECLDRAD in the ARM Data Center. (Go here to create an account to download the data.)

To cite these data, use doi:10.5439/1333748 for ARMBEATM and doi:10.5439/1333228 for ARMBECLDRAD.

Reference: Xie S, RB McCoy, SA Klein, RT Cederwall, WJ Wiscombe, EE Clothiaux, KL Gaustad, J Golaz, S Hall, MP Jensen, KL Johnson, Y Lin, CN Long, JH Mather, RA McCord, SA McFarlane, G Palanisamy, Y Shi, and DD Turner. 2010. “ARM Climate Modeling Best Estimate Data – A new data product for climate studies.” Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 91(1), 10.1175/2009bams2891.1.

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ARM is a DOE Office of Science user facility operated by nine DOE national laboratories.