LASP Science Seminars

The Department of Energy (DOE) Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) user facility provides continuous field measurements of atmospheric conditions by deploying state-of-the-art remote sensing and in situ atmospheric observatories at climatically significant locations. ARM operates three fixed-location atmospheric observatories at US Southern Great Plains (SGP), North Slope of Alaska (NSA), and Eastern North Atlantic (ENA) located in the Azores, and three mobile facilities (AMFs) which can be deployed anywhere in the world for roughly a year. These observatories provide long-term measurements of aerosol, cloud, precipitation, radiation, and atmospheric dynamics and thermodynamics. ARM Value-added Products (VAPs) are higher-order data products that have been analyzed and processed to ease scientists’ use of ARM data for atmospheric process studies and model improvement and evaluation. VAPs apply well established methods/algorithms to ARM data to retrieve a wide range of aerosol, cloud, and precipitation physical and radiative properties. In this presentation, I will give an overview of ARM VAPs in terms of their inputs and outputs, retrieval methods/algorithms, assumptions and limitations, and their applications in atmospheric research and climate models.