Instrument Field

The Eastern North Atlantic instrument field covers a variety of meteorological measurements focusing on atmospheric and boundary properties, surface and radiative fluxes, and precipitation.

Balloon-Borne Sounding System

Site operators use the balloon-borne sounding system, or SONDE, to launch weather balloons twice a day at the site. Radiosondes attached to the balloons provide vertical profiles of both the thermodynamic state of the atmosphere and wind speed and direction.

Administrative Office

Visitors check in here at the administrative office, which includes a small kitchenette, Wi-Fi, and a conference room. The administrative office building has work areas for onsite technical staff and also includes an area for visiting scientific and technical staff to use for experiments or instrument repair. This building includes a storage area for spare instruments and spare parts. In this office building is also breaker panels for utility power, a step down transformer to convert the incoming 416 volt supply to 240 voltage, and also contains power distribution and breaker panels for all the field instrumentation and instrumentation containers.­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­

Radar Wind Profiler

The radar wind profiler measures wind profiles, backscattered signal strength, and virtual temperature profiles. Virtual temperatures are recovered by transmitting an acoustic signal vertically and measuring the electromagnetic energy scattered from the wavefront.

Hydrogen Storage

This air conditioned storage container holds supplies needed for launching radiosondes using the automated Balloon-Borne Sounding System.

Raman Lidar

Developed specifically for the ARM Facility, the Raman lidar is an active, ground-based laser remote sensing instrument that measures water-vapor mixing radio and several cloud and aerosol properties. It is housed in two of the containers in this measurement main street.

Atmospheric Emitted Radiance Interferometer

Similar to a radar, the Doppler lidar operates with pulses of energy that are transmitted into the atmosphere; the energy scattered back to the transceiver is collected and measured as a time-resolved signal. This provides range- and time-resolved measurements of radial velocity and attenuated backscatter.

The radar wind profiler measures wind profiles, backscattered signal strength, and virtual temperature profiles. Virtual temperatures are recovered by transmitting an acoustic signal vertically and measuring the electromagnetic energy scattered from the wavefront.

Ka/W-Band Scanning ARM Cloud Radar & Ka-Zenith Radar

This unit is home to three cloud radars—the Ka-band and W-band and the Ka-zenith. ARM scanning cloud radars are fully coherent dual-frequency, dual-polarization Doppler radars mounted on a common scanning pedestal. The Ka-band zenith radar remotely probes the extent and composition of clouds at millimeter wavelengths.

Learn more on the ARM YouTube channel.

Micropulse Lidar

In this unit is the micropulse lidar (MPL), a ground-based optical remote sensing system designed primarily to determine the altitude of clouds overhead.

Aerosol Observing System

The aerosol observing system (AOS) is the primary platform for in situ aerosol measurements for the ARM Facility. This system measures aerosol optical properties to better understand how particles interact with solar radiation and influence the Earth’s radiation balance.

Storage Containers

Four sea containers provide additional storage at the Eastern North Atlantic site.

X-Band Scanning Precipitation Radar

An X-band dual-polarization Doppler radar operates at the Eastern North Atlantic site for climate research. This radar functions in a simultaneous transmit and receive (STAR) mode, meaning that the transmit signal is split so that power is transmitted on both horizontal and vertical polarizations at the same time.