The Department of Energy's (DOE) Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Program, is a key component of the Department's research strategy to address global climate change. The Program is a direct continuation of DOE's decade-long effort to improve General Circulation Models (GCMs) and provide reliable simulations of regional and long-term climate change in response to increasing greenhouse gases.The ARM Program is a highly focused observational and analytical research effort that will compare observations with model calculations in the interest of accelerating improvements in both observational methodology and GCMs. During the ARM Program, DOE will continue to collaborate extensively with existing Global Change programs at other agencies, including the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
The objective of the ARM Program is to provide an experimental testbed for the study of important atmospheric effects, particularly cloud and radiative processes, and testing parameterizations of these processes for use in atmospheric models. This effort will support the continued and rapid improvement of GCM predictive capability.