Development and Applications of ARM Millimeter-Wavelength Cloud Radars

Abstract

As the ARM Program was getting underway in the early 1990s, studies by Ramanathan et al. (1989) and Cess et al. (1990) highlighted the importance of cloud and radiation interactions to climate. Ramanathan et al. (1989) demonstrated that, on average, clouds cool the climate system but that different cloud types can have different influences upon it. Cess et al. (1990) showed that general circulation models have an array of different responses to the same sea surface temperature change that result from differences in model clouds and their interactions with radiation. In their papers discussing the ARM Program, Stokes and Schwartz (1994) and later Ackerman and Stokes (2003) emphasized the importance of characterizing clouds throughout a vertical column in order to fully understand the radiation field associated with them. They made clear that coupling of high-fidelity observations of clouds and radiation were necessary to improving model parameterizations of them, which were in turn necessary for improving prognostic models of future climate.