New ARM Best Estimate Data Available for North Slope of Alaska

The top figure shows relative humidity scaled, by total column amount from MWR, from sounding in height coordinate (%), from the North Slope of Alaska. The x-axis is labeled as calendar day in 2012 from 130 through 190. The y-axis represents height from 0 to 15 kilometers. The bottom figure shows surface precipitation from the NSA for the same time period in 2012. The precipitation rate is from 0 to almost 1.4 mm/hour. — ARMBEATM relative humidity (top) and surface precipitation (bottom) are shown for May 9 to July 8, 2012, at the North Slope of Alaska. Images were generated by Yuying Zhang, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

The Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) User Facility provides tailored datastreams known as ARM Best Estimate (ARMBE) data products for use in the evaluation of global earth system models.

The ARM Best Estimate Atmospheric Measurements (ARMBEATM) product, which contains basic atmospheric quantities, is now available for ARM’s North Slope of Alaska (NSA) atmospheric observatory for 2011–2012 to fill in missing data.

ARMBE products assemble quantities that are both well observed by ARM over many years and are often used in model evaluation into single data sets. These products consist of hourly averages and thus have temporal resolution comparable to a typical resolution used in earth system model output.

More information about ARMBE products is available on the ARMBE web page and Xie et al. (2010).

Scientists can use the NSA ARMBEATM data now. Access them in the ARM Data Center. (To download the data, first create an ARM account.)

Feedback on the data is always welcome. If you have questions or suggestions, please contact product developer Yuying Zhang or ARM translator Shaocheng Xie.

To cite the ARMBEATM data, please use doi:10.5439/1333748.

Reference: Xie S, RB McCoy, SA Klein, RT Cederwall, WJ Wiscombe, EE Clothiaux, KL Gaustad, J Golaz, S Hall, MP Jensen, KL Johnson, Y Lin, CN Long, JH Mather, RA McCord, SA McFarlane, G Palanisamy, Y Shi, and DD Turner. 2010. “ARM Climate Modeling Best Estimate Data – A new data product for climate studies.” Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 91(1), https://doi.org/10.1175/2009bams2891.1