Study of Aerosol Indirect Effects in China Begins

Summary

Beginning May 19, 2008, the Office of Science s Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Climate Research Facility is deploying its portable atmospheric laboratory in southeastern China, a dominant economic and industrial zone in East Asia. In order to examine the link between aerosols and clouds and their affect on the Earth s atmosphere, the ARM Mobile Facility is located in Shouxian, about 500 km west of Shanghai. In addition, a supplemental facility with fewer but similar instruments is obtaining measurements at an observatory on the shores of Lake Taihu, just 96 km west of Shanghai. Both of these facilities will operate through December 2008. To measure regional differences in atmospheric properties, an ancillary facility with a subset of the ARM Mobile Facility instruments is operating at a location in the semi-desert conditions of Zhangye, in north-central China, from April through June. The ancillary facility then moves to Xianghe, on the northeast coast downstream of Beijing. It will operate in this primarily agricultural environment from July through the end of the ARM Mobile Facility deployment in December. In partnership with the Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Science, the study is being conducted under the Climate Science agreement established in 1987 between the DOE and China Ministry of Science and Technology.