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REMINDER: Interested applicants for the Chairperson of the Environmental Sciences Department at BNL have until October 1 to apply. Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) is seeking a chairperson for the Environmental Sciences Department to lead the continued development of internationally competitive programs in climate, environmental science, and technology. Position requirements include: a PhD in atmospheric, [...]

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An Aerodyne high-resolution time-of-flight aerosol mass spectrometer (HR-ToF-AMS) was deployed during the Carbonaceous Aerosols and Radiative Effects Study (CARES) that took place in northern California in June 2010. We presented results obtained at Cool, California, (denoted as the T1 site of the project) in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, where intense biogenic [...]

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Summer time in Alaska this year brought a rush of visitors to the ARM Climate Research Facility Barrow site. North Slope of Alaska facility manager Mark Ivey hosted two prestigious groups of visitors: a Sandia National Laboratory leadership team in June and U.S. Department of Energy management from the Office of Biological and Environmental [...]

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The Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Climate Research Facility is a U.S. Department of Energy scientific user facility for the study of global climate change by the national and international research community. ARM has fixed sites from the Arctic to the equator and mobile facilities that are deployed to a wide variety of locations and climates. ARM [...]

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Global climate models parameterize moist convection as a collection of individual convective cells that come and go over 15–30 minutes. Most of the world’s rainfall, however, is actually produced by “organized” storm systems: groups of storm clouds over an area comparable to a climate model gridbox that generate new storms as the old ones [...]

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Columbia University's Center for Climate Systems Research (CCSR) invites applications for a postdoctoral researcher to work on detailed cloud-resolving model (CRM) simulations of midlatitude deep convection and make extensive comparisons of CRM results with in situ, radar, and satellite measurements. The position is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy Atmospheric System Research program and [...]

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The Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science (RSMAS) at the University of Miami invites applications for two postdoctoral positions in the Division of Meteorology and Physical Oceanography. We are seeking highly motivated postdoctoral research associates with strong backgrounds in numerical modeling and physics of tropical convective systems. Successful candidates are expected to join a [...]

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Eddy correlation flux measurement systems (ECOR) are used by ARM to provide surface turbulence flux measurements. The Quality Controlled Eddy Correlation Flux (QCECOR) value-added product (VAP) improves the ECOR data by applying the following quality control (QC) procedures: Eddy correlation corrections Determination of the quality-controlled energy fluxes from the corrected ECOR fluxes Stringent QC checks. The QCECOR evaluation product [...]

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Once a year, representatives from ARM’s External Data Center, Data Quality Office, Data Archive, and Data Management Facility gather with infrastructure management, scientists, and developers of data ingests and value-added products to discuss progress on infrastructure activities related to ARM data. In mid-August, the ARM Developers met at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory to review [...]

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The Two-Column Aerosol Project (TCAP) is now underway, and the instrumentation at the ARM Mobile Facility (AMF) is up and running at the Cape Cod National Seashore’s Highlands Center. The site is an excellent place for observing both clouds and aerosol (small particles ranging in size from nanometers to micrometers that are suspended in the [...]

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Atmospheric and Environmental Research (AER) has opportunities for atmospheric, ocean, and land surface remote sensing retrieval scientists to support the Microwave Integrated Retrieval System (MIRS) project, a NOAA Center for Satellite Applications and Research (STAR) project. MIRS is a state-of-the-art comprehensive and flexible real-time system for the retrieval of atmospheric profiles of temperature, water vapor, [...]

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The Ka-band ARM zenith radars (KAZRs) have replaced the long-serving millimeter-wavelength cloud radars (MMCRs). As a result, the Active Remote Sensing of Clouds (ARSCL) value-added product (VAP), which is based on MMCR observations, is being replaced by a KAZR version, the KAZR-ARSCL VAP. KAZR observations in this VAP are corrected for water vapor attenuation and [...]

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In the past few years, the ARM Facility added 19 new scanning cloud and precipitation radars to its fixed and mobile sites. Combined with the Facility’s upgraded zenith-pointing radars, ARM now operates the world’s largest multi-frequency radar network for obtaining measurements of cloud and precipitation properties for climate studies. To ensure the quality, characterization, calibration, [...]

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Knowledge of a wide range of meteorological, chemical, and aerosol quantities and properties is needed to fully understand the key processes that affect aerosol life cycle. Field campaign and operational measurements of aerosol properties and trace gas chemistry are often available in a wide range of formats. As a result, scientists usually spend a [...]

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The processes governing rainfall in coastal areas affected by monsoon rains are of great importance, as these regions include major population areas around the globe. Yet the diurnal variation of convection and associated cloud and radiative properties remains a significant issue in global forecast and climate models. This study analyzes observed diurnal variability of convection [...]

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Grabbing a virtual tiger by the tail, scientists led by researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory directly linked a cloud’s inclination to rain to its effects on the climate. Using global satellite data and complex calculations, they were able—for the first time—to develop a proxy measurement for one of the most vexing questions in atmospheric [...]

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DOE scientists at Pacific Northwest and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories found that sea salt, launched into the atmosphere by ocean waves, reacts with organic acids produced by human-caused pollution to yield particles loaded with organic salts and depleted in chloride. These reactions occur during hydration-dehydration cycles of mixed sea salt/organic particles in the atmosphere, and [...]

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In Korea, typhoons and heavy rainfall/snowfall often result in serious socio-economic consequences. To enhance their ability to predict and mitigate the damage from these severe weather phenomena, the Korean Meteorological Administration (KMA) is developing a three-dimensional network of ARM-like supersites for observing clouds, water vapor, and other meteorological components. On August 1, Dr. Kwan-Young [...]

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Editor's note: As part of the preparations for the upcoming Marine ARM GPCI Investigations of Clouds (MAGIC) field campaign, principal investigator Ernie Lewis discusses how radars use the Doppler effect to determine raindrop sizes and speeds. Most of us know that the Doppler effect pertains to the change in frequency of a wave emitted by or [...]

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ARM’s lesson plan, “Effects of Solar Radiation on Land and Sea” was recently selected for inclusion in the NSF-funded Climate Literacy and Energy Awareness Network’s (CLEAN) collection of educational resources. Receipt of the prestigious CLEAN seal means that the selected resource passed an extensive peer-review by educators and scientists to ensure adherence to stringent Climate [...]

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Enjoying fair skies and ocean breezes, a large and enthusiastic crowd gathered at the Highlands Center at Cape Cod National Seashore in late July to officially kick off the year-long Two-Column Aerosol Project, or TCAP. About 50 area stakeholders, four staff from the Massachusetts federal and state Congressional delegations, and several DOE officials joined [...]

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Editor's note: As part of the preparations for the upcoming Marine ARM GPCI Investigations of Clouds (MAGIC) field campaign, principal investigator Ernie Lewis provided information about the types of radars that will be used during the campaign. I visited Argonne National Laboratory earlier this week, where the ARM Mobile Facility instrumentation is being staged before it [...]

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Despite recent advances made in climate modeling, large systematic errors are still present in the models’ simulated mean state of climate. However, fully understanding the cause of these systematic errors in a climate system is difficult because a climate system is a complicated non-linear system, and climate errors could be the compensated result from errors [...]

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Abstracts for session proposals are currently being accepted for the 2013 European Geosciences Union (EGU) General Assembly in Vienna, Austria, April 07-12. This meeting aims to bring together scientists from across the globe specializing in all disciplines of the Earth, Planetary, and Space Sciences. EGU also provides a forum where young scientists can present their [...]

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The Atmospheric Sciences and Global Change Division at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) is looking for individuals with relevant qualifications, experience, and interests in one or more of the following areas: Cloud Statistics - Job ID: 301741 Cloud Parameterization - Job ID: 301743 Aerosol Wet Removal - Job ID: 301742 Boundary-Layer Turbulence [...]

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The shortwave radiative effect of an ice cloud observed over the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Climate Research Facility’s Southern Great Plains site in Oklahoma during the 2000 Intensive Operations Period (IOP) was investigated using vertical profiles of the size and shape distributions of ice crystals constructed from airborne cloud microphysical probes, libraries of the single-scattering properties [...]

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Clouds play a critical role in determining the radiation budget of the Arctic through their role in complex feedbacks involving the sea ice, clouds, aerosols, and the atmosphere. Although seasonal variations in the concentration and compositions of aerosols exist in the Arctic, there is no clear understanding of the mechanisms by which aerosols impact cloud [...]

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Images of crystals from high-resolution Cloud Particle Imagers (CPI) installed on aircraft flying through ice clouds in many field campaigns have shown that small ice crystals, with maximum dimensions smaller than 100 micrometers, appear quasi-spherical. However, there have hitherto been no studies that investigated whether the detailed shape characteristics of these quasi-spherical particles vary in [...]

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