Research Highlights

Snow and ice accumulation, called snowpack, act as the nation’s largest natural water reservoir. Snow in the Rocky Mountains supplies rivers that flow to both sides of the Continental Divide, providing both drinking water and water for irrigation. The Upper Colorado River Basin (UCRB) provides water for 40 million people, so knowing how much snow is stored and understanding the processes that increase and degrade snowpack is vital. The Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) User Facility, working with Colorado State University, deployed a high-resolution weather radar to the ARM User Facility’s Surface Atmosphere Integrated Laboratory (SAIL) site near Mount Crested Butte to build better maps of snow water and mountain snowfall patterns. Researchers developed a gridded Surface QUantitative pRecipitation Estimates (SQUIRE) product from the radar observations. They used different methods to show the range of possible outcomes as snow is difficult to measure and can affect radar signals in many ways. This approach helps communicate the remaining uncertainty to the many groups who will rely on these snowfall maps.

Radiosondes are considered the gold standard for measuring profiles of temperature, humidity, and wind, but their temporal resolution is often too coarse for many applications. This study proposes a new method using a normalized height grid in the temporal interpolation process that yields more accurate profiles in the convective boundary layer, i.e., the turbulent atmospheric layer between the surface and the free troposphere.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) User Facility has launched a new multi-year observational site in the Bankhead National Forest (BNF) in northern Alabama, a region characterized by abundant biogenic aerosol, frequent convection, and strong land-atmosphere coupling. This site has an extensive suite of advanced instruments—including ground-based aerosol sensors, atmospheric profilers, scanning cloud and precipitation radars, elevated tower measurements, and aerial platforms—designed to capture observations from the forest canopy up through the clouds. These detailed observations will reveal how the forest influences the aerosol population, the land surface regulates the transition from shallow-to-deep convection, and vegetation controls energy and turbulence within the boundary layer.