Capabilities and Products
The ARM Climate Research Facility operates field research sites around the world for global change research. Three primary locations—Southern Great Plains, Tropical Western Pacific, North Slope of Alaska—plus aircraft and the portable ARM Mobile Facility are heavily instrumented to collect massive amounts of atmospheric measurements needed to create data files. Scientist use these data to study the effects and interactions of sunlight, clouds, and radiant energy, as well as interdisciplinary research involving hydrology, ecology, and weather forecasting. As part of this effort, ARM scientists and ACRF infrastructure staff provide value added processing to the data files to create new data streams called value added products. Software tools are then provided to help open and analyze these products. Program documentation, from setting up the sites to developing the value added products, is available for each step in this process.