Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) airborne field campaign data products between 2013 and 2018

Abstract

Abstract. Airborne measurements are pivotal for providing detailed, spatiotemporally resolved information about atmospheric parameters, and aerosol and cloud properties, thereby enhancing our understanding of dynamic atmospheric processes. For 30 years, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science supported an instrumented Gulfstream-1 (G-1) aircraft for atmospheric field campaigns. Data from the final decade of G-1 operations were archived by the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) user facility Data Center and made publicly available at no cost to all registered users. To ensure a consistent data format and to improve the accessibility of the ARM airborne data, an integrated dataset was recently developed covering the final six years of G-1 operations (2013 to 2018). The integrated dataset includes data collected from 236 flights (766.4 hours), which covered the Arctic, the U.S. Southern Great Plains (SGP), the U.S. West Coast, the Eastern North Atlantic (ENA), the Amazon Basin in Brazil, and the Sierras de Córdoba range in Argentina. These comprehensive data streams provide much-needed insight into spatiotemporal variability of thermodynamic quantities, aerosol and cloud states and properties for addressing essential science questions in Earth system process studies. This manuscript describes the DOE ARM merged G-1 datasets, including information on the acquisition, collection, and quality control processes. It further illustrates the usage of this merged dataset to evaluate the Energy Exascale Earth System Model (E3SM) with the Earth System Model Aerosol-Cloud Diagnostics (ESMAC Diags) package.