Eastern North Atlantic

This view shows Graciosa Island, Azores, Eastern North Atlantic Facility.

The new ENA observations site will be situated near the previous AMF deployment.
The new ENA observations site will be situated near the previous AMF deployment.
The latest site to join the ARM Climate Research Facility suite of observations began operations in September 2013. Identified broadly as the Eastern North Atlantic (ENA), this facility is located on Graciosa Island in the Azores. The Azores are an island group located in the northeastern Atlantic Ocean, a region characterized by marine stratocumulus clouds. Response of these low clouds to changes in atmospheric greenhouse gases and aerosols is a major source of uncertainty in global climate models. A baseline suite of instrumentation came online quickly after the sonde launch with data available beginning September 30.

An extremely successful 18-month deployment of the ARM Mobile Facility took place on Graciosa Island during 2009–2010 for the Clouds, Aerosol, and Precipitation in the Marine Boundary Layer (CAP-MBL) field campaign. Results from this campaign confirmed that the Azores have the ideal mix of conditions to study how clouds, aerosols, and precipitation interact.

This new observation site will have significant enhancements to instruments previously deployed to the Azores, including a Ka-/W-band scanning cloud radar, precipitation radar, and Doppler lidar. It has the full support of the Azorean government and collaborators at the University of the Azores. Los Alamos National Laboratory will operate the site for the ARM Facility.

Proposed site instrumentation include:

  • Aerosol instrumentation: Hygroscopic Tandem Differential Mobility Analyzer, Aerosol Chemical Speciation Mass Spectrometer, Cavity Attenuated Phase Shift Particle Extinction Monitor, CO/N2O/H2O gas-phase monitor, CO2/CH4/H2O gas phase monitor, and Ultra-High Sensitivity Aerosol Spectrometer
  • Atmospheric and boundary state systems: surface meteorological instrumentation, boundary layer cloud system, total sky imager, weighing bucket rain gauge, total precipitation sensor, eddy correlation flux measurement system, and disdrometer
  • Lidars: micropulse lidar and Doppler lidar
  • Radars: zenith cloud radar, scanning cloud radar, scanning precipitation radar, and radar wind profiler
  • Radiometers: atmospheric emitted radiance interferometer, microwave radiometer, 3-channel microwave radiometer, multifilter rotating shadowband radiometer, pyranometer, pyroheliometer, pyrgeometer, and blackbody calibration system.