Meetings > PI / Science Team Meeting > Posters

The Eastern North Atlantic ARM site: Clouds, aerosols and their interactions in the remote marine boundary layer

 
Poster PDF

Authors

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Pavlos Kollias — Stony Brook University
Mark A. Miller — Rutgers University
Andrew Ackerman — NASA - Goddard Institute for Space Studies
Maike Ahlgrimm — Deutscher Wetterdienst
Eduardo Brito Azevedo — University of the Azores
Xiquan Dong — University of Arizona
Richard M Forbes — European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts
Ann M. Fridlind — NASA - Goddard Institute for Space Studies
Zhongyu Kuang — Rutgers University
Kim L. Nitschke — Los Alamos National Laboratory
Paul Arthur Ortega — Hamelmann Communications
Jasmine Remillard — McGill University
Jayson Stemmler — University of Washington
Jian Wang — Washington University in St. Louis

Category

Warm low clouds, including aerosol interactions

Description

In 2013, the US Department of Energy Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) program started the Eastern North Atlantic (ENA) sampling site to study clouds, aerosols and their interactions on Graciosa Island in the Azores archipelago. The ENA site was chosen to provide new long-term measurements in a remote marine region dominated by marine boundary layer (MBL) clouds that are challenging to represent faithfully in climate models. The new ENA site was also the location of the 2009-2010 deployment of the ARM Mobile Facility, and the two datasets taken together provide an unprecedented dataset documenting the remote MBL. Instrumentation has been added to the ENA site since late 2013 and is expected to be fully operational by summer 2016. This poster highlights how the ENA and AMF measurements are being used to document cloud and aerosol variability, understand their interactions, and constrain models. The data are being used to document and understand MBL meteorological, cloud and aerosol variability on timescales from minutes to seasons. Some key findings thus far indicate that: the NE Atlantic MBL is decoupled over 90% of the time, which limits the correlation between surface-observed CCN and cloud droplet concentration; approximately 50% of all clouds sampled produce virga or precipitation reaching the ground; cold air outbreaks result in very low aerosol concentrations, especially in winter; warm rain is susceptible to changes in the concentration of cloud condensation nuclei. During 2017 and 2018 several airborne deployments will take place to study key aspects of clouds, aerosols, meteorology and their interactions at the ENA site.