ARM Aerial Facility Technical Director Beat Schmid and ARM Aerosol Working Group Translator Connor Flynn received the prestigious 2015 National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Group Achievement Award. The award recognized the collaborative team from the NASA field campaign Studies of Emissions and Atmospheric Composition, Clouds, and Climate Coupling by Regional Surveys (SEAC4RS) deployed during the summer of 2013.
SEAC4RS explored questions related to the atmospheric gas and aerosol composition, evolution and distribution, aerosol influences and feedbacks on clouds, and served as a validation/calibration testbed for future satellite instruments. Schmid and Flynn participated in the campaign by supporting the Spectrometer for Sky-Scanning, Sun-Tracking Atmospheric Research (4STAR). The SEAC4RS team was selected to receive the prestigious NASA Group Achievement Award for making outstanding contributions to the NASA Mission.
Schmid, Technical Director of DOE’s ARM Aerial Facility and manager at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), provided expertise related to the conduct of the campaign and is the original intellectual force behind 4STAR. Schmid is an expert in airborne atmospheric research. He has been involved as a participant or leader in nearly 20, multiagency aircraft campaigns and has authored over 80 peer-reviewed journal publications.
Flynn, physicist and atmospheric scientist at PNNL, provided scientific expertise including many flight hours operating the 4STAR instrument aboard the NASA DC-8 aircraft. Joining the ARM Facility nearly two decades ago, he has acted as instrument mentor for active remote sensors and passive remote sensors several of which he has designed and built. Flynn is also the ASR Aerosol Life Cycle Working Group Translator responsible for overseeing the majority of aerosol-related data products, is leading the Aerosol Observing System harmonization effort, and is a charter member of the Aerosol Measurement Science Group.
4STAR was developed jointly by NASA Ames and PNNL with funding support by NASA and the ARM Facility. See the field campaign abstract, “Aircraft Integration and Flight Testing of 4STAR” and the final report.
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The ARM Climate Research Facility is a national scientific user facility funded through the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science. The ARM Facility is operated by nine Department of Energy national laboratories.