ARM Facility Embarks on Expansion in the United States

Through 20 years of measurements at its observations sites around the world, the ARM Facility has helped researchers to reduce key uncertainties related to atmospheric processes that affect Earth’s energy balance. Building on this progress, the ARM Facility is now embarking on a reconfiguration strategy for even better observations of atmospheric processes to constrain high-resolution process models. Key elements of the new strategy include the creation of two “super sites” in the United States:

• Southern Great Plains—measurements at the SGP site in Oklahoma will be augmented to include additional scanning and profiling remote sensors and more detailed measurements of the land-atmosphere interface.
• North Slope of Alaska—aerial operations will link measurements from Barrow and Oliktok, and unmanned aerial systems will provide additional spatial information around Oliktok.

To support the expansion of the continental U.S. site in Oklahoma, operations at ARM sites in the Tropical Western Pacific (TWP) will end in 2014. Data obtained from these sites will remain available to the scientific community through the ARM Data Archive to support continuing research in tropical climate. Future observations in the tropics or other climate regimes will continue to be supported through deployments of the ARM Mobile Facilities via the selection of field campaigns proposed by the science community. This reconfiguration does not affect operations of the new ARM site in the Azores or the mobile facilities.

ARM leadership will work with the science community in the coming year to optimize this new measurement strategy, with the continued goal of improving the understanding of atmospheric processes and the representation of those processes in climate models.