The U.S. DOE ARM User Facility Establishes a New Site for Studies of Land–Aerosol–Cloud Interactions in the Southeastern United States

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) user facility has established a new site in the Bankhead National Forest (BNF) in northern Alabama that will gather data on how clouds, the land surface, and aerosols interact at a hierarchy of scales important to understanding and simulating the Earth system. Starting its operations in October 2024, the BNF site provides a multiyear opportunity for scientists to unravel complex land–atmosphere interactions. A suite of ground-based sensors, elevated tower-based instrumentation, and aerial facilities will enable scientists to investigate those interactions from within the canopy to the clouds. The southeastern United States was recommended by the DOE ARM and its collaborators in the broader community as an important region to address their common scientific questions, given the region’s abundant surface-forced convective clouds and mesoscale convective systems that pose ongoing challenges in Earth system models. The region is also home to significant terrain complexity and land-use heterogeneity that will unleash new understanding of anthropogenic and biogenic aerosol processes, boundary layer aerosol–cloud interactions, and the interactions between the terrestrial ecosystem and coupled aerosol–cloud–radiation processes.