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Climate & Atmosphere Processes

Biosphere-Atmosphere Interactions

Atmospheric System Research

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lightening strike in Great Plains Oklahoma
A lightning strike captured by one of the LBNL stereo cameras at the ARM Southern Great Plains site in Oklahoma. (Photo Credit: David Romps, Berkeley Lab.)

The Earth and Environmental Sciences Area's, Atmospheric System Research Program advances fundamental understanding of atmospheric radiation, clouds, and precipitation, and their interactions with Earth's surface and climate.

Highlights

Project

Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Carbon Project (ARM Carbon)

In ARM's Carbon Project, we aim to improve our ability to predict exchanges of carbon, water, and energy at the landscape scale. As we develop these models, we can better understand how the fluxes of carbon, water and energy link to land use and climate. The mixture of land uses and simple topography in the Southern Great Plains make this an ideal region to test methods of scaling flux predictions from plot to regional scales. There, we are measuring stocks and fluxes of carbon, water, and energy at various spatial and temporal scales.

Land Atmosphere-Interactions schematic
Project

Land-Atmosphere Interactions and Surface Radiative Forcing (ASR)

This project advances understanding and prediction of land-atmosphere interactions and greenhouse gas radiative forcing at Earth’s surface. We use observations to model the processes linking Earth's carbon, water, and energy cycles—from soil moisture and vegetation to clouds, radiation, and precipitation. We also observe the direct radiative effects of CO2 and CH4 on climate, using ARM spectroscopic measurements. Our research is yielding new insights into processes governing the water cycle over land, and is enabling rigorous testing of radiative transfer in climate models.

Stereo Photogrammetry of clouds
Project

Stereo Photogrammetry of Clouds at the ARM sites

This project characterizes the life-cycle dynamics of moist convection using stereo photogrammetry in combination with other instruments at Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) sites, and using large-eddy simulations to help interpret those observations. Stereo cameras are used to characterize the sizes, speeds, circulations, and ascent distances of individual convective bubbles through their life cycle. These data on cloud life cycles are difficult, if not impossible, to obtain with other ARM instruments.

Program Overview

The Earth and Environmental Sciences Area’s, Atmospheric System Research Program advances fundamental understanding of atmospheric radiation, clouds, and precipitation, and their interactions with Earth’s surface and climate. Researchers in this program develop process-scale knowledge for predictive models of the coupled Earth system.

Featured Projects

Project

Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Carbon Project (ARM Carbon)

In ARM's Carbon Project, we aim to improve our ability to predict exchanges of carbon, water, and energy at the landscape scale. As we develop these models, we can better understand how the fluxes of carbon, water and energy link to land use and climate. The mixture of land uses and simple topography in the Southern Great Plains make this an ideal region to test methods of scaling flux predictions from plot to regional scales. There, we are measuring stocks and fluxes of carbon, water, and energy at various spatial and temporal scales.

Land Atmosphere-Interactions schematic
Project

Land-Atmosphere Interactions and Surface Radiative Forcing (ASR)

This project advances understanding and prediction of land-atmosphere interactions and greenhouse gas radiative forcing at Earth’s surface. We use observations to model the processes linking Earth's carbon, water, and energy cycles—from soil moisture and vegetation to clouds, radiation, and precipitation. We also observe the direct radiative effects of CO2 and CH4 on climate, using ARM spectroscopic measurements. Our research is yielding new insights into processes governing the water cycle over land, and is enabling rigorous testing of radiative transfer in climate models.

Stereo Photogrammetry of clouds
Project

Stereo Photogrammetry of Clouds at the ARM sites

This project characterizes the life-cycle dynamics of moist convection using stereo photogrammetry in combination with other instruments at Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) sites, and using large-eddy simulations to help interpret those observations. Stereo cameras are used to characterize the sizes, speeds, circulations, and ascent distances of individual convective bubbles through their life cycle. These data on cloud life cycles are difficult, if not impossible, to obtain with other ARM instruments.

Andrew Moyes

Senior Scientific Engineering Associate

Phone: 510-486-6246
abmoyes@lbl.gov

Cristina Castanha

Principal Research Associate

Phone: 510-486-7500
ccastanha@lbl.gov

Da Yang

Faculty Scientist

Phone: 510-486-5618
dayang@lbl.gov

Daniel Feldman

Staff Scientist

Phone: 510-495-2171
Fax: 510-486-7775
drfeldman@lbl.gov

David Romps

Faculty Scientist

Phone: 510-486-7175
Fax: 510-486-5686
dromps@lbl.gov

Ian N. Williams

Faculty

Affiliate

Phone: 510-495-8048
inwilliams@lbl.gov

Jovan Milan Tadic

Guest Scientist

Affiliate

Phone: 510-486-4865
jtadic@lbl.gov

Ken Reichl

Senior Scientific Engineering Associate

Phone: 805-813-1488
kreichl@lbl.gov

Lara Kueppers

Faculty Scientist

Phone: 510-486-5813
Fax: 510-486-5686
lmkueppers@lbl.gov

Margaret Torn

Margaret S. Torn

Ecologist & Biogeochemist

Senior Scientist

Phone: 510-495-2223
Fax: 510-486-7775
mstorn@lbl.gov

Sebastien Biraud - portrait

Sébastien Biraud

Staff Scientist

Climate Sciences Department Head

Phone: 510-486-6084
scbiraud@lbl.gov

Wai-Yin Stephen Chan

Senior Scientific Engineering Associate

Phone: 510-486-4194
swchan@lbl.gov

William J. Riley

Director (Acting), Climate & Ecosystem Sciences Division;

Senior Scientist

Phone: 510-486-5036
Fax: 510-486-7070
wjriley@lbl.gov

Primary Sponsors

Program Contacts

Margaret Torn

Margaret S. Torn
Senior Scientist

Christin Buechner
Program Manager

News & Events

EESA Scientists Collaborate With Universities to bring Environmental Science Research Opportunities and Training to Students Underrepresented in STEM

January 13, 2023

  EESA researchers are collaborators in three of the 41 projects awarded in December by DOE through its Reaching a New Energy Sciences Workforce (RENEW) initiative.  RENEW aims to build foundations for research at institutions that have been historically underrepresented in the Office of Science (SC) research portfolio. The initiative provides opportunities for undergraduate and…

A Q&A With Postdoc Kunxiaoja Yuan

January 4, 2023

  Kunxiaojia Yuan received her Bachelor’s of Engineering in remote sensing and Ph.D. in geographic information engineering from Wuhan University. She is a postdoctoral researcher in EESA, with a research focus on global carbon, energy, and water cycle analysis and model evaluation using machine learning and causal inference. What motivated you to pursue a postdoc…

A Q&A With Postdoc Brandon Enalls

After flipping on the TV to a science channel segment about environmental microbes, postdoc researcher Brandon Enalls was instantly amazed by microbiology. After working with a research group that studied microbes in extreme salinity, like the Dead Sea, Enalls knew he wanted to study microbes “in strange places, doing strange things,” inspiring him to get…

Study Demonstrates the Importance of Data Management When Downscaling

December 12, 2022

Global climate models can help show the planet’s future, but what if you want to zoom in on an individual spot on the map? To get more local information, climate scientists commonly use an approach called downscaling to make global data relevant to an individual area. Downscaling relies, in part, on comparing the observed historical…

Strengthening FAIRer Earth and Environmental Systems Science Data with Community-led Reporting Formats

November 14, 2022

Earth and environmental systems science (ESS) research is evidence-based and relies on the analysis and modeling of diverse and multi-scale datasets. The volume of ESS data has risen sharply in recent years, with more data gathered by the minute. This may come as positive news—however, much of this data remains unarchived, difficult to access, and…

Register for the 2022 ESS-DIVE Community Data Workshop to Advance Environmental System Science through Collaborative Data Management

October 26, 2022

From the climate crisis to water insecurity, high-quality, openly available data are needed to solve global environmental challenges. However, important environmental systems science (ESS) data often remains difficult to access, unarchived, or even unusable. To help improve access to and use of ESS data, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) supported the establishment of the…

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