Breakout Summary Report

The DOE ARM user facility has established its third ARM Mobile Facility (AMF3) in the Southeast United States for a five-year deployment that started in October 2024, with siting focused in the Bankhead National Forest (BNF) in Northern Alabama. As site science team activities are shifting from site operations support to process studies, it is timely to begin more direct engagement with the broader community for the organization, planning, and coordination of field campaigns to enhance the impact of BNF observations by leveraging: 1) current and upcoming agency-led satellite and sub-orbital investigations (e.g., NASA TEMPO, NASA INCUS, NASA WHyMSIE); with 2) the spatially-larger observational domain of the BNF site enabled by coordinating multiple ARM sensing platforms (e.g., S10 flux tower, supplemental sites, TBS, UAS, and the Challenger Jet as available).

The breakout session will support: 1) the scheduling of smaller campaigns to enhance the science impact of ARM resources; 2) scheduling of instrument calibration activities to minimize downtime on both small- and large-scale deployments; and 3) development/encouragement of observational data sets to support modeling activities.

This BNF-focused breakout session was organized into two sections. Section 1 provided ARM updates on VAPs (John Shilling), radar data quality (Marqi Rocque), AOS data quality (Olga Mayol-Bracero), and the main tower configuration and instrumentation (Mark Spychala). Section 2 focused on collaborative and cross-cutting science opportunities, with presentations on INCUS (Investigation of Convective Updrafts, Sean Freeman), GLAFO (GEWEX Land-Atmosphere Feedback Observatory, Shawn Serbin), and an example ASR project targeting aerosol-convection interactions (Joel Thorton). This was followed by a discussion period organized around three topics developed from community-solicited feedback: (1) modifications to ARM baseline sampling protocols, and approaches to proposing and implementing them; (2) missing IOPs, observations, and model-ready data products that are critical for community science; and (3) ARM resources (either available or needed) to help the community better coordinate IOPs among university PIs, SFAs, and external agencies.

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Discussed needs fell into two general categories: (1) critical measurements and how to interpret them, and (2) resources to facilitate IOP communication, coordination, and collaboration.

Measurement needs:

• the identification of “cloud-processed” aerosol using surface-based remote sensing and in-situ sensors

• the release of an aerosol size distribution product that is corrected for inlet losses

• time-averaging guidance for SO2 data to separate signal from background

• direct access to time-synchronized, “raw” (e.g., 10 Hz) flux tower data to detect coherent structures

• vegetation-centric observations (e.g., evapotranspiration, phenology, soil type/structure, soil NOx) to improve canopy models

• a Doppler lidar at the top of the walk-up tower to better address coupling of canopy to the lower boundary layer

• a polygonal sounding array co-located with aerosol profilers to generate a “model-ready” domain-wide aerosol forcing dataset to separate local from advected aerosol

• a network of flux towers targeting sub-domain surface variability and its controls on secondary circulation to improve kilometer scale models

• a lightning mapping array to study convective initiation and transitions

• trace gas measurements critical in biosphere-atmosphere coupling (e.g., NOx: with NO being the highest priority species, BVOCs, NH3) over diurnal-to-seasonal time scales

• size-resolved aerosol properties at community-specified particle diameters (e.g., sub-saturated water uptake from HTDMA, super-saturated water-uptake from size-resolved CCN)

• a fast-flow community inlet for the walk-up tower to support “larger foot-print” guest instruments that are constrained to surface (e.g., base-of-tower) installation

IOP communication, coordination, and collaboration needs:

• a public calendar/timeline that lists dates for planned IOPs, calibration activities (e.g., AOS), engineering activities (e.g., radar shake-down), and where to host it

• a regular community meeting for science and data quality updates and to facilitate IOP planning/coordination

• support for the deployment/siting of guest instruments (e.g., PI, external agency) outside of established ARM sites (but within the BNF “domain”)

• support for the development of large multi-agency field campaigns that require long-term planning and coordination

• a mechanism for the communication and sharing of additional/external data

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Based on the discussion, we identified several near-term activities to pursue, including:

• organizing a BNF community meeting (e.g., town hall) at the upcoming AGU and AMS meetings;

• coordinating with GEWEX community as BNF is being considered for the proposed establishment of a GLAFO L4+ site;

• organizing a regular (e.g., monthly) telecon for the ARM/ASR and broader community (e.g., ESS, NASA, NOAA) to provide updates on data-coverage/data-quality/VAP availability from key platforms (e.g., tower, radar, aerosol, radiation, profilers, supplemental sites), to communicate scientific findings from initial analysis, to coordinate IOPs with shared science drivers (e.g., biosphere-atmosphere exchange), and to provide a “clearing house” for community questions/concerns;

• exploring the use/expansion of the ARM Field Campaign dashboard functionality to communicate notable site observations with science impact (e.g., high pollen loading, QLCS, biomass burning) from site operators and external sources (e.g., UAH, NWS, USFS), and to develop a calendar/timeline that lists all (approved) IOP dates and other time periods of community interest (e.g., engineering activities, instrument shake-downs, calibrations); and

• reaching out to ASR working group chairs to facilitate community planning of IOPs, initial modeling activities (e.g., LASSO), sampling strategies, and measurement platform coordination (e.g., across surface in-situ/profiling sensors, walk-up tower, supplemental sites, UAS, TBS).