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A new software interface developed for the ACRF Data Archive allows users, for the first time, to view and obtain "statistical views" of measurements collected by ARM as part of the data selection and access process. The new interface allows users to drill down from multi-year, yearly, and monthly statistical graphs, with results presented in [...]
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The Department of Energy recently announced the selection of major ACRF field campaigns that will take place in 2010. Studies led by prinicipal investigators Rob Wood, Hans Verlinde, and Jay Mace will examine marine, mixed-phase, and cirrus clouds in the Azores, Alaska, the Great Plains, and Colorado. For more information, read the DOE press release.
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The realistic prediction of cloud cover and cloud properties by global climate models (GCMs) is a well-known limiting factor in the accuracy of today's climate predictions. Cloud prediction by GCMs is made difficult by the fact that the scale of cloud variability is often much smaller than the grid resolutions that are computationally available to [...]
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The VAMOS Ocean-Cloud-Atmospheric-Land Study, or VOCALS, is an international field program designed to improve the understanding of the physical and chemical processes central to the climate system of the Southeast Pacific. The intensive observational portion of the regional experiment takes place off the west coast of Chile between October and November 2008. During this [...]
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An important energy driver of the Earth-atmosphere system is the radiative exchange at the surface. One of the major influences on the amount of radiative energy reaching the surface is the effect of clouds, which in general tend to
decrease the downwelling shortwave (SW) irradiance and
increase the downwelling longwave (LW) irradiance relative
to the [...]
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A primary component of recent climate change is the radiative forcing caused by the increasing amounts of the radiatively active greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Between 1750 and 2005, the radiative forcing at the top of the atmosphere due to increases in carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and halocarbons has totaled over +2.6 W m-2. [...]
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Low level stratiform liquid water clouds have a significant influence on the earth’s climate due to their strong shortwave radiative forcing. Such clouds cover large regions of the earth’s oceans [Klein and Hartmann 1993]. The shortwave optical depth of liquid water clouds depends upon both the bulk condensate amount and the size of the cloud [...]
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