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Climate model grid meshes are too coarse to explicitly simulate storm system winds and therefore must rely on simplified models referred to as parameterizations to represent all storm properties and effects. Cloud-resolving models (CRMs), on the other hand, are run over smaller domains and for short time periods and can explicitly resolve the wind circulations [...]

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Many studies have shown that aerosols suppress rainfall through indirect effects. Recent studies have also suggested that this suppression of warm rain by aerosols may allow more cloud particles to ascend above the freezing level, initiating an ice process in which more latent heat is released, thus invigorating convection. The theory (Rosenfeld et al. [...]

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Aerosol observing systems (AOS) at ARM's sites measure cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) at several supersaturations using a single-column CCN counter. The Average of Cloud Condensation Nuclei from AOS (AOSCCNAVG) value-added product (VAP) was developed to consolidate the relevant CCN parameters into a single file and average data over the 5-minute integration time of each [...]

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The MFRSR-Column Intensive Properties (MFRSRCIP) value-added product (VAP) has been developed for estimating the microphysical (e.g., size distribution) and optical (e.g., single-scattering albedo and asymmetry factor) properties of aerosols. Size distribution retrieval is based on multifilter rotating shadowband radiometer (MFRSR) measurements of the direct irradiance at five wavelengths (415, 500, 615, 673 and 870 nm) [...]

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On a stormy Friday evening in early September, Walter Brower received an urgent message: “Beach erosion very close to ECOR Point.” Brower is the local facility manager for ARM’s North Slope of Alaska site in Barrow. His duties extend to Point Barrow at the coastline of the Arctic Ocean, where ARM operates an eddy correlation [...]

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The new Convective Vertical Velocity (CONVV) value-added product uses observations from Doppler weather radars and other instruments to produce a best estimate of convective vertical velocity. This evaluation product is available for a few key cases during the Midlatitude Continental Convective Clouds Experiment field campaign at the ARM Southern Great Plains site. Convective processes play [...]

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Through funding from the Department of Energy, more than two dozen instruments are obtaining measurements from the sky above a cargo ship as it routinely transits between California and Hawaii.

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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 shares his news of the deployment installation. I was in Los Angeles again last week to see the successful installation of the MAGIC instruments aboard the Horizon Spirit! It was great to watch. [...]

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The University of North Dakota is seeking qualified applicants for a tenure-track faculty position within the Department of Atmospheric Sciences. The successful candidate will be expected to teach undergraduate and graduate courses, where the nominal teaching load is three courses per year. Demonstrated expertise and enthusiasm for teaching is highly desirable. Successful candidate will also [...]

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The Atmospheric Sciences and Global Change Division at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) is seeking an ARM Aerial Facility (AAF) Payload Engineer/Scientist. The successful candidate will report to the AAF Technical Director. This position will be responsible for the maintenance, upgrades, calibration, installation, and airborne operation of AAF instrumentation, as well as data analyses, data quality [...]

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Colorado State University's (CSU) Department of Atmospheric Science invites applications for a postdoctoral researcher or an early career research scientist to conduct radar meteorology research. As a member of the Radar Meteorology Group, led by Dr. Steven Rutledge at the CSU-CHILL National Radar Facility, this position will engage in cutting-edge research in a variety of [...]

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The long-term measurement records from the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement site on the Southern Great Plains (SGP) show evidence of a surface irradiance bias in the global Numerical Weather Prediction model from the European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF). This has been a long-standing problem in the model and previous studies have suggested that low [...]

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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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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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