ARM User Executive Committee Announces New Roles

Published: 20 November 2025

New vice-chair and subgroup members are now in place

Xue Zheng, a research scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in California, is the new vice-chair of the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) User Facility’s User Executive Committee (UEC).

After the current term ends, Zheng is set to succeed Michael Jensen as the chair of the UEC, which represents the user community in interactions with ARM management.

“Xue brings important experience using ARM observations to develop and validate earth system models, leading to improved simulations and new knowledge about how the atmosphere works,” says Jensen. “This experience perfectly aligns with the ARM facility’s mission, making her input a great asset to the UEC.”

Zheng officially began her four-year UEC term in January 2025 after being elected in late 2024. She serves as a UEC representative for four ARM science themes: Aerosol Modeling, Cloud Modeling, Global-Scale Modeling, and High-Resolution Modeling.

Zheng has used ARM data extensively in her research.

In 2021, Zheng received a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science Early Career Research Program award to conduct a project using long-term ARM observations and DOE’s Energy Exascale Earth System Model (E3SM) to study the aerosol indirect effect on liquid-phase clouds.

A 2024 paper led by Zheng and published in Geophysical Research Letters applied the Simple Cloud-Resolving E3SM Atmosphere Model (SCREAM) to observations from ARM’s 2019–2020 Cold-Air Outbreaks in the Marine Boundary Layer Experiment (COMBLE).

In February 2025, Zheng published a paper in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres that used data collected at ARM’s Eastern North Atlantic (ENA) atmospheric observatory to estimate the meteorological covariations of aerosol and marine boundary-layer cloud properties in the ENA region.

She is also a co-investigator on the Tying in High-Resolution E3SM with ARM Data (THREAD) project, supported by DOE’s Atmospheric System Research (ASR) program area. THREAD is led by Yunyan Zhang, a former UEC member and Zheng’s colleague at LLNL.

New Subgroups Announced

The UEC announced three new subgroups, all chaired by returning UEC members, that will help broaden community outreach:

• the ARM Field Campaign Request/Proposal Process, chaired by Zhien Wang
• Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning Activities Within ARM, chaired by Erika Roesler
• Collecting Feedback from the ARM Community, chaired by Jensen.

The fourth subgroup, Enhancing Communication With the Modeling Community, is an existing subgroup that was established in early 2021. Returning UEC member Sarah Brooks will co-chair the modeling communication subgroup with Kai Zhang, one of seven members who joined the UEC in 2025.

All subgroup chairs and co-chairs are responsible for organizing, convening, and leading subgroup discussions and representing the subgroup within both the UEC and ARM.

Individual subgroups are expected to begin meeting in November 2025.

Photos are courtesy of the researchers and their institutions.