LASIC Researchers Encouraged to Contribute to Joint Special Journal Issue

Published: 22 July 2018

The LASIC field campaign collected ARM Mobile Facility data at Ascension Island to study smoke aerosols and their interaction with clouds as they passed westward over the Atlantic.

For scientists who participated in the Layered Atlantic Smoke Interactions with Clouds (LASIC) field campaign, there’s a new opportunity to contribute to a joint special journal edition.

Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics and Atmospheric Measurement Techniques will publish a joint special issue based on new research coming out of the southeast Atlantic—namely from LASIC, a field campaign managed by the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) user facility.

LASIC ran from June 2016 through October 2017 and focused on smoke aerosols (tiny particles in the air) from African biomass fires and their interaction with clouds while moving westward above the Atlantic. Using an ARM Mobile Facility, a portable observatory with sophisticated atmospheric instruments, LASIC researchers collected data at Ascension Island in the South Atlantic Ocean to study how smoke properties changed after long-range atmospheric transport and how the smoke influenced clouds.

Paquita Zuidema, LASIC principal investigator, encourages scientists who participated in the field campaign or are conducting research with the campaign data to submit contributions.

“The special issue is already open and has begun to receive its first submissions,” she says. “We look forward to submissions from the LASIC research community.”

In addition to LASIC, the joint special issue will also feature related work from the ORACLES (NASA), CLARIFY (United Kingdom), and AEROCLO-Sa (France) research efforts.

“All four campaigns share the common goals of understanding the coupled absorbing aerosol-low cloud system of the southeast Atlantic and its radiative impacts,” says Zuidema. “The southeast Atlantic is a complex system that will ultimately require the collaboration of all campaigns to understand and properly model it. This special issue is an effort to increase communication between and awareness of the individual research efforts and can be expected to enhance the visibility of each submission.”

LASIC researchers can submit their contributions by using the online registration forms on the ACP and AMT websites:

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The ARM Climate Research Facility is a DOE Office of Science user facility. The ARM Facility is operated by nine DOE national laboratories.