Research Highlights

 

Members of the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) user facility’s science team are major contributors to radiation and cloud research. Scientists and investigators using ARM publish about 150 peer-reviewed journal articles per year, and ARM data are used in many studies published by other scientific organizations. These documented research efforts represent tangible evidence of ARM’s contribution to advances in almost all areas of atmospheric radiation and cloud research.

Recent Highlights

pH dependence of brown-carbon optical properties in cloud water

6 December 2023

Hennigan, Chris

Supported by: ASR

Research area: Aerosol Processes

Organic molecules in the atmosphere that absorb light are collectively called "brown carbon (BrC)".  In this work, we show that the optical properties of BrC in real atmospheric cloud water samples are highly sensitive to pH.

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Nonequilibrium behavior in isoprene secondary organic aerosol

4 December 2023

Fast, Jerome D

Supported by: ARM ASR

Research area: Aerosol Properties

Isoprene, an organic compound, is produced by many plants and has a large impact on atmospheric chemistry and composition. As described in an earlier research project, the ways isoprene converts to a secondary organic aerosol (SOA) and how anthropogenic, or man-made, pollutants affect this process are researched extensively because it [...]

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Arctic warming by abundant fine sea salt aerosols from blowing snow

14 November 2023

Wang, Jian

Supported by: ARM ASR

Research area: Aerosol Properties

We found that the sublimation of blowing snow produces high concentrations of fine-mode sea salt particles with diameters below 300 nm. Between November and April, blowing snow occurs more than 20% of the time. Model simulations show that sea salt aerosols generated from blowing snow account for approximately 30% of [...]

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