PNNL

Abstract

Through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the U.S. Department of Energy provided the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Climate Research Facility with $60 million for new and upgraded instrumentation, equipment, and infrastructure to improve atmospheric data sets. These enhancements will take place among the permanent ARM research sites in Oklahoma and Alaska in the United States, and near the equator in the tropical Western Pacific. They will also advance the capabilities of ARM’s mobile and aerial research platforms. This article focuses on key enhancements - particularly new scanning radars, enhanced lidar technologies, aerosol observation systems, and in situ aircraft probes - that will provide unprecedented data sets for the modeling community.