Research

Research Highlights

Scientists and investigators using Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) User Facility data publish about 150 peer-reviewed journal articles per year. These documented research efforts represent tangible evidence of ARM’s contributions to improving our understanding of clouds and aerosols and their interactions with the Earth’s surface. ARM research highlights summarize these published research results.

Share your Research with ARM

Each of your DOE-funded journal articles should include a research highlight. This is an important opportunity to summarize your work and describe its scientific impact. ARM has a simple form for you to fill out to share your highlight with ARM management.

Submit a Highlight

Explore the Highlights Database

Check out research highlights submitted by members of the ARM community and view each highlight’s linked journal article. Search the database by title, author, or research area.

Search Highlights

Recent Highlights

Arctic Surface Energy Partitioning Depends on Season and Sea Ice Thickness

25 September 2025

Shupe, Matthew

Research area: Surface Properties

Supported by: ARM ASR

The surface energy budget couples the atmosphere with the annual evolution of sea ice. Direct measurements from the Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the study of Arctic Climate (MOSAiC) have been used to derive a yearly cycle of surface energy budget process relationships that are used to characterize the seasonal evolution of atmosphere-surface interactions and evaluate process interactions in operational models.

Hemispheric Asymmetry in Cloud Phase Partition

23 September 2025

Diao, Minghui

Research area: Cloud Distributions/Characterizations

Supported by: ARM ASR

New research reveals a fundamental imbalance in the composition of mixed-phase clouds between Earth's two hemispheres. Using U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) User Facility and National Science Foundation airborne observations from 75°S to 87°N, clouds in the Southern Ocean were found to contain significantly higher occurrence frequencies and mass fractions of supercooled liquid water than their northern counterparts. These findings imply an asymmetric response of clouds to a changing Earth's system in the two hemispheres.

New Machine Learning Product Provides Best-Estimate Planetary Boundary-Layer Height Science

13 September 2025

Zhang, Damao

Research area: Atmospheric Thermodynamics and Vertical Structures

Supported by: ARM ASR

This work introduces a machine learning (ML) approach to generate a best-estimate planetary boundary-layer height (PBLHT-BE-ML) by integrating four PBLHT estimates obtained from different remote-sensing measurements.