Beginning on January 9, the ARM Mobile Facility began officially collecting atmospheric data from a location at the airport in Niamey, Niger, Africa. As part of the RADAGAST field campaign, the AMF will measure the effects of absorbing aerosols from desert dust in the dry season, and the effects of deep convective clouds and associated…

This month, scientists from the University of Alaska-Fairbanks and the U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL) completed a joint field campaign at the ARM site in Barrow, Alaska. The objective of the year-long “High Latitude Optical Turbulence Characterization” field campaign was to characterize near-surface atmospheric optical turbulence over a flat, relatively low humidity, high-latitude location. Results…

Following a successful premier last year, ARM staffed its exhibit for a second time at the 2005 American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting held December 5-9 in San Francisco. As a record setting 11,904 scientists gathered to discuss the latest issues affecting all areas of earth and space sciences, ARM staff took the opportunity to…

Virtually all cloud studies within the ARM Program involve the Millimeter Wavelength Cloud Radar (MMCR). This instrument is the only source for obtaining detailed information about cloud location and internal structure in the atmospheric columns above the ARM sites, and can be operated in almost any atmospheric condition. In November, a major upgrade to the…

Recently, several new Sun servers joined the production system at the ARM Data Management Facility (DMF). These servers provide much needed cpu-the Central Processing Unit is the computing part of the computer known as the processor-power to handle the ever-increasing processing load. The DMF is responsible for collecting and processing hourly data from all three…

In January 2006, the ARM Mobile Facility (AMF) begins a year-long field campaign in Africa as part of a multi-year international experiment called the African Monsoon Multidisciplinary Analysis (AMMA). The AMF will be placed at the airport in Niamey, Niger, well within view of the Global Earth Radiation Budget (GERB) geostationary satellite. Cloud and radiative…

To alleviate crowded conditions at its research facilities on the North Slope of Alaska (NSA) site in Barrow, ARM operations staff recently completed the installation of a new Guest Instrument Facility. Similar to the platform at the Atqasuk site, the facility consists of two insulated shipping containers mounted on pilings, with a mezzanine to accommodate…

On September 27, a new way to browse and order ARM data became available on the ARM website after nine months of development. ARM infrastructure staff from three national laboratories—Brookhaven National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory—teamed together to integrate the ARM web pages with the ARM Archive, creating the ability…

Between September 7-9, ARM researchers and international collaborators involved in flight operations for the Tropical Warm Pool International Cloud Experiment, or TWP-ICE, met at Sandia National Laboratories to simulate daily mission planning during the month-long field campaign, which begins in January 2006. With the possibility of up to five aircraft in the sky at one…