Guidance / Submitting Proposals: Guideline Overview

Guidelines : 2025 ARM Mobile Facility Call

Overview

The Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) User Facility, supported by the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Office of Science, is now accepting preliminary proposals from scientists to deploy the second ARM Mobile Facility (AMF2) for field campaigns within the contiguous United States to support the Office of Biological and Environmental Research (BER)’s interests in advancing the fundamental understanding of atmospheric processes to improve regional and global earth system models in support of DOE’s mission.

AMF2 comprises approximately 50 instruments designed to obtain continuous measurements of clouds, aerosols, precipitation, energy, and other meteorological variables. Measurement capabilities of AMF2 include meteorological instrumentation; a suite of broadband and spectral radiometers; aerosol instrumentation; and advanced remote sensing measurements, including lidars and cloud radars.

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Application Topics and Deployment Information

Applications are requested for AMF2 deployments to study fundamental atmospheric and/or land-atmosphere interaction processes that hinder the ability of current earth system models to inform projections of energy demand, impacts on grid reliability or other critical domestic infrastructure, and/or domestic energy production. Applicants must describe how the proposed AMF2 measurements will address critical knowledge gaps about the basic science understanding and modeling representation of these atmospheric or land-atmosphere interaction processes. Applications that align scientifically or are colocated with other BER-supported projects are encouraged as part of further developing BER’s digital testbed approaches.

Examples of topics of interest include but are not limited to atmospheric and/or land-atmosphere interaction processes:

that are important to simulating large-scale and localized high wind events (e.g., derechos, microbursts, gust fronts) that may impact energy distribution (e.g., power lines) and production (e.g., wind turbines)
that impact the frequency, size, longevity, and severity of mesoscale convective systems and complexes and their microphysical properties (e.g., lightning, hail, wind, and extreme precipitation) that may impact energy infrastructure
that affect the intensity and duration of heat waves that may affect energy demand and infrastructure
that are relevant for improving the predictability of solar and wind energy production in regions where these are important to grid stability
that control precipitation phase, type, and amount at the surface during winter storms to better simulate impacts of cold season precipitation (i.e., freezing rain/snow/icing) on energy infrastructure.

Proposed deployments of AMF2 are limited to locations within the contiguous United States. The earliest expected start date for the AMF2 deployment is Sunday, November 1, 2026. Exact campaign start dates will depend on the proposed location, details of the proposed campaign, complexity of the proposed deployment, availability of appropriated funds, and ARM logistical constraints.

Call Timeline and Review Process

The call timeline is as follows:

Call released: Friday, April 18, 2025
Preproposals due by: 5 p.m. Eastern time Friday, June 6, 2025
Encourage/discourage decisions will be sent to applicants by: Tuesday, July 1, 2025
Full proposals from encouraged applicants due by: 5 p.m. Eastern time Tuesday, August 12, 2025.

Preproposals will be reviewed by the ARM Infrastructure Management Board (IMB) for relevance to ARM goals, logistical feasibility, and safety/security concerns of the proposed location. Preproposals approved by the IMB will be further reviewed by BER for relevance to the DOE/BER mission. Applicants will be informed whether their preproposals are encouraged for a full proposal.

Preproposal Requirements

Preproposals must:

be submitted through the online field campaign proposal form
summarize the scientific goals of the proposed campaign
identify how the proposed AMF2 measurements will address critical knowledge gaps about the fundamental scientific understanding and modeling representation of atmospheric and/or land-atmosphere interaction processes
explain how the identified knowledge gaps are relevant to improving the ability of current earth system models to inform projections of energy demand, impacts on grid reliability or other critical domestic infrastructure, and/or domestic energy production
identify the proposed location and campaign dates.

Submit Your Preproposal

Additional Details for Applicants

Read the ARM Field Campaign Guidelines for an overview of processes and requirements, the full proposal format, and the review criteria.
Principal investigators (PIs) are expected to limit their proposal teams to no more than 10 co-investigators who are actively involved in the preparation of the field campaign proposal. As ARM is a user facility, participation in AMF deployments through deployment of guest instruments and/or use of ARM data is always open to the broader community and does not require membership on the proposal team.
AMF deployments are generally for periods of six to 12 months. Proposals requesting longer deployments must include strong science justification for an extended deployment period. Deployments shorter than six months or longer than 24 months will not be considered.
Applicants are encouraged to leverage existing measurement sites and infrastructure operated by DOE or other agencies. Applicants are encouraged to identify specific potential site locations, rather than general regions, in their full proposals. Letters of collaboration/support from potential sites can be included in an appendix.
Each proposal may request a main AMF site plus one supplemental site. Supplemental sites must be within reasonable driving distance (< 150 kilometers) from the main site to allow the AMF technicians to support both sites.
ARM has provided a list of its instruments available for deployment for this solicitation and whether they may be requested at the main or supplemental sites. Full proposals should prioritize ARM instrumentation requests and clearly link them to proposed science goals.
The ARM tethered balloon system and aerial capabilities (e.g., ArcticShark uncrewed aerial system and Challenger 850 research aircraft) may NOT be requested as part of this solicitation. Separate calls for these capabilities are released periodically by ARM.

Proposal Resources

Research Funding

Please note that for successful proposals, ARM provides the operational and logistical resources to conduct the proposed campaign; however, ARM does not provide research funding associated with this campaign.

To accelerate the use of the proposed AMF2 measurements to improve earth system models to inform and support DOE’s mission, DOE/BER research programs may consider a separate but coordinated application for research funding from PIs of submitted AMF proposals. Such applications should focus on integration of the proposed AMF2 observations with advanced data analytics and modeling through topics such as:

developing and applying innovative advanced data analysis techniques (including but not limited to artificial intelligence/machine learning) to accelerate incorporation of ARM observations into earth system models (e.g., development of forcing data sets, new parameterizations, data assimilation, model metrics)
developing digital testbeds and/or ARM instrument simulators for numerical models
conducting pre-deployment modeling and/or observational analysis to inform instrument operations and/or characterize the local environment.

PIs of encouraged preproposals should reach out to the BER Program Managers for more information about applying for research funding.