ARM operations staff prepare the ARM Mobile Facility in Point Reyes, California, for delivery to Africa, upon the successful conclusion of the first field campaign. Photo by Kim Nitschke. After a successful six-month stint taking cloud and aerosol measurements at Point Reyes National Seashore on the California coast, ARM operations staff began packing up the…

To support the ever-increasing file storage needs of the ARM Data Management Facility (DMF) and ARM Engineering computers, a Network Appliance (NetApp®) file server with 2.68 terabytes, or 2.95 trillion bytes, of highly-reliable and extremely-fast, usable disk storage joined the DMF servers. The NetApp system performs nearly four times faster than the previous file server…

As the northernmost inhabited city in the United States, Barrow is a unique and critical location for conducting climate research at high-latitudes. ARM file photo. On August 16, U.S. Senators Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Susan Collins, and Lindsey Graham visited the North Slope of Alaska (NSA) on a bi-partisan trip to examine the effects of…

Field calibration of the rotating shadowband radiometer (RSS) is performed by the RSS instrument mentor (left) and a colleague from SGP operations. ARM file photo. With research facilities around the globe, one of the biggest challenges faced by ARM is communication and consistent application of new information and instrument advances. In early August, about 45…

BBC reporters climbed onto the “skydeck” with ARM operations staff in Barrow to see the instruments and the surrounding area. ARM file photo. A visit to the North Slope of Alaska in late May by journalists from the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) resulted in a news segment on BBC Four, the network’s “most intellectually and…

Established as the first ARM research facility in 1992, the Southern Great Plains (SGP) site in Oklahoma is the “old man on the block” when it comes to infrastructure. Though significant improvements have been made to facilities and equipment throughout the years, the computer network at the SGP Central Facility—the most heavily used of all…

Two ARM sites—Barrow and Atqasuk—at the North Slope of Alaska (NSA) provide key data about cloud and radiative processes at high latitudes. Barrow is located at the northern most point of Alaska, on the shore of the Arctic Ocean, while Atqasuk is located on the Arctic tundra about 100 km south (inland) of Barrow. Analyses…

The new W-band ARM cloud radar, or WACR, provides improved sensitivity for detecting tiny objects in the atmosphere to an altitude of 5 km. The instrument’s antenna is located adjacent to the antenna on top of the MMCR shelter; the rest of the unit is located inside (inset). ARM file photo. The main purpose of…

New climate datastreams are now available from Point Reyes National Seashore in California, where the first deployment of the ARM Mobile Facility is currently underway, and for the site of the ARM Mobile Facility’s next deployment at Niamey, Niger, Africa. The new datastreams, which are supplementary to the datastreams obtained by the Mobile Facility instruments,…

From left, Dr. Sylvia Edgerton, Science Liaison for the ARM Science Board, Dr. John Watson, Research Professor at the Desert Research Institute, and Dr. Judith Chow, Research Professor at the Desert Research Institute and member of the ARM Science Board, discuss the ARM display during the A&WMA conference. ARM file photo. Approximately 2,500 environmental professionals…