Real-time data from all three of the ARM Climate Research Facility sites (North Slope of Alaska, Southern Great Plains, and Tropical Western Pacific) are collected and processed at the ARM Climate Research Facility Data Management Facility (DMF) each day. Processing involves the application of algorithms for performing simple averaging routines, qualitative comparisons, or more complicated…

Science collaborators at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) and the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industry Research Organization (CSIRO) are using the ARM Climate Research Facility Darwin site in Australia to evaluate aerosol optical properties during the tropical dry season. As part of the Darwin Aerosol Intensive Operational Period (IOP), a CIMEL sunphotometer was installed…

In late April, scientific collaborators at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) carried out two high-altitude flights over the ARM Climate Research Facility Southern Great Plains (SGP) central facility. The purpose of these flights was to use a new suite of cloud property probes on the WB-57F aircraft to more accurately characterize the properties…

In mid-April, hardware and software upgrades to the millimeter wave cloud radar (MMCR) at the ARM Climate Research Facility’s North Slope of Alaska (NSA) were completed. Hardware upgrades included replacing the OS/2 and Solaris computers with two Windows 2000 computers. One of these computers is for the MMCR radar. It now has a new digital…

In early May, a CIMEL sunphotometer owned by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was re-installed at Barrow, Alaska, one of two research sites that make up the ARM Climate Research Facility’s North Slope of Alaska (NSA) locale. The CIMEL is a multi-channel, automatic sun-and-sky scanning radiometer that takes daytime measurements of direct solar…

The U.S. Department of Energy requires all contractors using LINUX-based computers to implement RedHat Enterprise Version 3.0 (RHE V3.0) software as their standard operating system. This applies to computer systems running at the ARM Climate Research Facility’s Southern Great Plains (SGP) locale, and implementation there is planned for late 2004. All existing software packages will…

Phase II of the ARM Program’s special series of radiosonde flights, coordinated with overpasses of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s “Aqua” satellite, began in September 2003 at all three of ARM’s locales. Because ARM is the only program that can provide ongoing, consistent, and coordinated research-grade radiosonde data from stations located in the arctic,…

In October 1997, the ARM Program entered into a contract with the University of Alaska-Fairbanks to obtain image data covering the ARM Climate Research Facility’s North Slope of Alaska (NSA) locale. Image data taken by an advanced very high resolution radiometer (AVHRR) are collected by a satellite receiver at Fairbanks and, up until February 2004,…

In March 2004, upgrades to a second (back-up) laser for the Raman Lidar at the ARM Climate Research Facility’s Southern Great Plains (SGP) locale were completed, concluding a complex effort that began more than a year ago. Upgrades included required modification to the optical layout of the lidar system, several changes to the laser head…

Following four weeks of data acquisition, the Arctic Winter Water Vapor Intensive Operational Period (IOP) at the ARM Climate Research Facility’s North Slope of Alaska (NSA) locale was completed the weekend of April 9, 2004. In collaboration with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Environmental Technology Laboratory (ETL), the major goal of this IOP was…