DOE Collaborations

The Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) user facility provides observations that support a variety of U.S. Department of Energy programs in the Earth and Environmental Systems Sciences Division (EESSD) of the Office of Biological & Environmental Research (BER). ARM also collaborates with the Environmental Molecular Science Laboratory (EMSL), another BER user facility.

The Atmospheric System Research (ASR) program is a close research partner of the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) user facility. ASR scientists make direct use of ARM observations to quantify the interactions among aerosols, clouds, precipitation, radiation, dynamics, and thermodynamics to improve fundamental process-level understanding, with the ultimate goal to reduce the uncertainty in global and regional climate simulations and projections.

The Earth System Modeling (ESM) program advances coupled climate and Earth system models for climate change projections at global-to-regional spatial scales and temporal scales spanning decadal to centennial.

An important connection between ARM and ESM is through the Accelerated Climate Modeling for Energy (ACME) project. ACME works on developing and applying the most complete, leading-edge climate and earth system models to challenging and demanding climate-change research imperatives. ARM observations will provide a mechanism to test models developed through the ACME project.

The Regional & Global Climate Modeling (RGCM) program advances the predictive understanding of Earth’s climate by focusing on scientific analysis of the dominant sets of governing processes that describe climate change on regional scales.

The Terrestrial Ecosystem Science (TES) program seeks to improve the representation of terrestrial ecosystem processes in Earth system models thereby improving the robustness of model projections and providing the scientific foundation for solutions to DOE’s most pressing energy and environmental challenges.

ARM leverages its North Slope of Alaska site to provide data for the TES-supported Next-Generation Ecosystems Science (NGEE)-Arctic program. NGEE-Arctic is improving climate model predictions through advanced understanding of coupled processes in Arctic terrestrial ecosystems.

The Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL) is a BER user facility that leads molecular-level discoveries for the DOE and BER that translate to predictive understanding and accelerated solutions for national energy and environmental challenges. EMSL and ARM have collaborated on a number of previous ARM field campaigns, including the recent deployment of the ARM Mobile Facility to the Amazon, and are supporting research that would incorporate both facilities’ capabilities to analyze aerosols gathered at ARM’s Southern Great Plains atmospheric observatory.