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The U.S. Department of Energy’s Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) User Facility provides 30-plus years of atmospheric measurements, including data sets from all seven continents and five oceans, to advance the understanding of the Earth’s atmosphere.

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Read the Latest from ARM

Jim Mather wears an ARM beanie and green jacket and looks at the camera on a cold, cloudy day with others in the background wearing beanies and jackets. A person behind Jim is wearing a safety vest and yellow protective helmet.

Features

ARM Director Winds Down Impactful Career

20 July 2026

Jim Mather, who is retiring this summer after three decades with ARM, reflects on his life and career.

ARM Names New Director

13 July 2026

Atmospheric scientist Larry Berg will guide ARM into the next era of scientific observations and succeed Jim Mather, who has led ARM since 2007.

Streamlining ARM Data Access With AI-Ready Infrastructure

28 May 2026

New storage, software, and computing frameworks set the stage for next-generation data tools and research support.

A set of four panels, with the left panel showing a map of the San Diego, California, region with variational analysis domains indicated for the EPCAPE campaign in La Jolla. The three panels on the right show omega from different versions of the VARANAL value-added product and the difference in omega between the two versions.

Data Announcements

New EPCAPE VARANAL Forcing Data Released to Evaluation

30 July 2026

A new version of continuous large-scale forcing data for the 2023–2024 Eastern Pacific Cloud Aerosol Precipitation Experiment (EPCAPE) is now available from ARM.

New Southern Great Plains Continuous Large-Scale Forcing Data Released

13 July 2026

This constrained variational analysis (VARANAL) value-added product includes both the large-scale forcing terms and the evaluation fields, which can be used for driving a variety of models and validating simulations.

ARM Releases New Cloud Optical Depth Product

8 July 2026

ARM has developed the Three-Channel Sunphotometer Cloud Mode (SPHOTCOD) value-added product to provide information on cloud properties for process studies.

Clouds roll across the sky over the Kennaook/Cape Grim area.

Research Highlights

Turbulence Controls on Marine Shallow Cumulus Cloudiness

18 June 2026

Marine shallow cumulus clouds cool the Earth by reflecting solar radiation back to space and are challenging to accurately represent in earth system models. These clouds are intimately coupled with turbulence in the boundary layer. Here, vertical air motion and its co-variability with cumulus cloudiness are characterized using data from the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Eastern North Atlantic (ENA) observatory.

Generating a Stratocumulus-Like Cloud Top in a Convection-Cloud Chamber

1 June 2026

Stratocumulus clouds cover a large fraction of Earth’s surface and strongly influence regional weather and the global energy balance. Entrainment, the mixing process at the top of the stratocumulus-topped boundary layer, strongly influences cloud lifetime, precipitation, and radiative properties. Despite its importance, entrainment remains poorly understood, largely due to the difficulty in observing fine-scale structures near the cloud top, which can be only meters thick. We therefore propose a laboratory facility with controllable conditions and the use of numerical simulations to demonstrate how cloud-top entrainment can be studied experimentally.

A Concept of a Convection-Cloud Chamber to Study Aerosol-Cloud-Drizzle Interactions

22 May 2026

The Aerosol-Cloud-Drizzle Convection Chamber (ACDC2) collaboration has developed a comprehensive concept and modeling hierarchy for a convection-cloud chamber facility designed to investigate the chain of events from aerosol activation to cloud droplet growth and drizzle formation within turbulent clouds. The proposed 9-meter-tall chamber enables steady-state turbulence and microphysical conditions, facilitating continuous direct observation of cloud and aerosol properties.

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Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) | Reviewed March 2025