About

The Atmospheric System Research (ASR) program is a key U.S. research activity addressing a broad area of uncertainty in earth system models: the interdependence of clouds, atmospheric aerosols, and precipitation, and how they influence Earth’s radiative balance and hydrological cycle. ASR coordinates closely with the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) User Facility and takes advantage of ARM’s suite of measurements of radiation, aerosols, clouds, precipitation, and thermodynamics from its long-term fixed sites, mobile facility deployments, and aerial facility campaigns.

ASR supports research at DOE National Laboratories, universities, and throughout the broader research community that uses observations (primarily from ARM) along with process modeling and laboratory experiments to improve understanding and model representation of atmospheric processes and tests the atmospheric physics theories that are the foundation of Earth system models.

In close collaboration with the ARM user facility, ASR seeks to improve understanding and quantify the interactions between clouds, aerosols, precipitation, and the Earth’s surface with the goal of improving the representation of atmospheric processes in dynamic models across a range of scales.

ASR has four priority research areas corresponding to atmospheric regimes with large uncertainties in earth system prediction—aerosol processes, warm boundary-layer processes, convective processes, and high-latitude processes. To better connect research teams working on these processes and their interactions, ASR is organized into four working groups:

• Aerosol Processes – understanding and model representation of processes governing the spatial and temporal distribution of atmospheric particles and their chemical, microphysical, and optical properties.
• Warm Boundary Layer Processes – understanding and model representation of processes controlling the structural and radiative properties of clouds, aerosols and their interactions with the underlying surface in the lowest few kilometers of the atmosphere.
• Convective Processes – understanding and model representation of convective cloud processes and properties, including cloud cover, precipitation, life cycle, dynamics, and microphysics over a range of spatial scales.
• High-Latitude Processes – understanding and model representation of cloud, aerosol, and surface-interaction processes controlling the surface energy budgets in northern and southern high-latitude regions.

From the earliest years of DOE’s atmospheric research, from around FY1990 to FY2010, the principal observation-based DOE programs examining atmospheric processes critical for improving earth system models were the Atmospheric Science Program (ASP); the research component of the much broader Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Program (ARM User Facility); and the operationalized portion of the ARM program that focused on deployments.

Recognizing that the two ARM activities were related, these three programs coordinated complementary approaches to quantify the effects of clouds and aerosols on the atmosphere’s radiation balance. The two research-oriented programs had different approaches to new science, such that ASP emphasized controlled laboratory experiments involving atmospheric chemistry, while the ARM research program emphasized field research. The two research programs collaborated on several joint field campaigns—typically at ARM facility observatories—thereby combining the distinct measurement scales, methodologies, and expertise available within the programs to yield complementary data on the same processes, which has led to new insights and understanding.

In October 2009, a restructuring of BER’s atmospheric investments consolidated all atmospheric research into the new Atmospheric System Research (ASR) program. In ASR, all research from ASP and ARM Research was combined into a seamless strategy across laboratory, field, and process modeling research, and the ARM User Facility focused exclusively on providing state-of-the-art observational capabilities and deployments in tight coordination with ASR’s research agenda.