abstract:The United States Department of Energy's Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Program was created in 1989 to develop several highly instrumented ground stations to study cloud formation processes and their influence on radiative transfer. This scientific infrastructure now includes two mobile facilities, an aerial facility, and data archive available for use by scientists worldwide through the ARM Climate Research Facility—a scientific user facility.
Inthemeasurementofinfraredradiationcharacteristics of anobject, the atmosphericattenuationin the measuringpathisan importantfactor which has influence onmeasurementprecision.
Del Genio studied more than 3, 000 individual cloud "snapshots" collected between 1994 and 1997 at the Department of Energy's AtmosphericRadiationMeasurement Southern Great Plains field station.