Science Plan for the Deployment of the Third ARM Mobile Facility to the Southeastern United States at the Bankhead National Forest, Alabama (AMF3 BNF)

Program Document · Fri Sep 01 00:00:00 EDT 2023

OSTI ID:2274901

Kuang, Chongai ^[1]; Giangrande, Scott ^[1]; Serbin, Shawn ^[2]; Elsaesser, Gregory ^[3]; Gentine, Pierre ^[4]; Heus, Thijs ^[5]; Oue, Mariko ^[6]; Peters, John ^[7]; Smith, James ^[8]; Steiner, Allison ^[9]; McComiskey, Allison ^[1]; Kollias, Pavlos ^[1]; Morrison, Hugh ^[10]; Jensen, Michael ^[1]; Sedlacek, Arthur ^[1]; Vogelmann, Andrew ^[1]; Petters, Markus ^[11]; Turner, David ^[12]

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1. Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), Upton, NY (United States)
2. Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), Upton, NY (United States); ; NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), Greenbelt, MD (United States)
3. Columbia Univ., New York, NY (United States); NASA Goddard Inst. for Space Studies (GISS), New York, NY (United States)
4. Columbia Univ., New York, NY (United States)
5. Cleveland State Univ., Cleveland, OH (United States)
6. Stony Brook Univ., NY (United States)
7. Pennsylvania State Univ., University Park, PA (United States)
8. University of California, Irvine
9. University of Michigan
10. National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), Boulder, CO (United States)
11. North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC (United States)
12. NOAA

In 2018, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) held a workshop for the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) (Mather and Voyles 2013) user facility to discuss critical climate challenges and locations where key ARM Mobile Facility (AMF) observational assets could impact Earth system modeling (ESM). As an outcome, the southeast United States (SE U.S.) was identified as a high-priority region to target climate-process studies that promote a deeper understanding of the climate system and bolster ARM interactions with the community to drive ESM advancement. The DOE ARM user facility is a globally recognized leader in deploying and operating strategically located observation sites around the world for studying the properties of aerosols and clouds and their interaction with radiation, precipitation, and the Earth’s surface. In partnering with the DOE Atmospheric System Research (ASR) program, ARM solicited a multi-agency Site Science Team approach to provide input and close interaction with ARM management towards a successful SE U.S. deployment of the ARM third Mobile Facility (AMF3) (Miller et al. 2016). These efforts included identifying key locations, science drivers and instruments, and measurement strategies to address the wider climate-process needs and ESM improvement. Community input served a vital role in establishing, refining, and informing the relevant drivers and decisions regarding this AMF3 deployment. The team has identified Northern Alabama (N. AL) as regionally representative to unlock the key opportunities that will improve our understanding and model representation of aerosol, cloud, and land surface processes and their couplings in the SE U.S. A defining aspect of the AMF3 deployment is its commitment to long-term (anticipated five-year) observations to mitigate potential seasonal-to-annual variability that often limits appropriate attribution of phenomena to local or larger-scale processes. The proposed location may leverage nearby surface networks and multi-agency and partner assets to enrich this multi-year deployment. One motivation is to understand the role of spatiotemporal variability (thermodynamic, land-surface) across aspects of the climate system, with our AMF3 team anticipating future demands on characterizing the relationships between local-to-regional cloud development and surface processes across a diverse patchwork of natural, managed, and urban landscapes as found throughout the N. AL regions. The main site targets an intact, representative, forested region – the Bankhead National Forest (BNF) – underscoring further team commitment to regionally important land atmosphere two-way interactive studies “from the canopy to the clouds”, with enhanced tower instrumentation augmenting traditional ARM capabilities adjacent to this site. Multiple supplemental sites will also be distributed across this region, prioritizing added needs for biodiversity. Anticipated high-priority cloud science themes will target N. AL as a regional SE U.S. hotbed for high-impact weather, convective cloud onset, and shallow to-deep cloud transitioning. Anticipated aerosol drivers will focus on chemical processes that control the evolution of organic aerosol, the seasonality and spatial distribution of water vapor and particle-phase water, and its role on aerosol optical properties. Anticipated land atmosphere drivers consider the two-way feedbacks between surface influence on aerosols, clouds, and precipitation properties and the associated radiative impacts on plant physiology and canopy-scale fluxes. Emphasis will include the study of the impact of surface processes on aerosols via precursor emission, and on clouds via moisture flux and thermal development.

• Research Organization: DOE Office of Science Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Program (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER)
• DOE Contract Number: AC06-76RL01830
• OSTI ID: 2274901
• Report Number(s): DOE/SC-ARM-23-035
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

Doppler lidar
aerosols
convection