Horizon Lines The C-9 class ship Horizon Spirit is a 268-meter steam powered container ship that will make the Los Angeles to Hawaii run as part of the Horizon Lines fleet for ARM's MAGIC campaign. It is an American made ship built in the late 1980s.
Image: Flickr/ARM Climate Research Facility
Some new cargo is officially sailing today between Los Angeles and Honolulu, part of an atmospheric research expedition to understand how clouds influence weather patterns around the world.
The 892-foot Spirit, a container ship owned by Horizon Lines, is now home to a Department of Energy mobile laboratory designed to study the atmosphere. It is the second time the department is conducting such an experiment in the hopes of getting better data on clouds to improve global climate models.
"This is going to be the longest study of its type that's ever been done," said Ernie Lewis, the principal investigator and an atmospheric scientist in the environmental sciences department at Brookhaven National Laboratory. The project, known as MAGIC, will run until September 2013, with collaborators across the country including Argonne National Laboratory and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
The project's name reflects its history and the amalgamation of experiments now on the high seas. MAGIC stands for Marine ARM GPCI Investigation of Clouds. ARM stands for Atmospheric Radiation Measurement. GPCI stands for GCSS Pacific Cross-section Intercomparison. GCSS stands for GEWEX Clouds Systems Study. And GEWEX is the Global Energy and Water Cycle Experiment.
Basically, the instruments measure the atmosphere -- particularly clouds -- from the bottom up, tracking how they form and disperse. Using radars, spectrometers and laser detection systems crammed into the three 20-foot shipping containers that constitute the second ARM Mobile Facility (AMF2), the equipment will track black carbon, aerosols, cloud stacks, ozone, light transmission, wind speeds and temperatures. Two on-board technicians will also launch weather balloons and monitor more than 50 instruments. Lewis said the data could help modelers develop a better picture of the global climate.
Clouds are especially important in understanding how the atmosphere behaves. They reflect sunlight back into space, trap heat and carry moisture, all of which can have contradictory impacts. Varieties like puffy, cottony cumulus clouds; wavy stratocumulus clouds; and tall, thundering cumulonimbus clouds behave differently as well.
In this case, researchers are investigating low marine boundary layer clouds over the Pacific Ocean. "We don't have a good understanding about how clouds and white clouds form the way they do, especially in that region," Lewis said. "To get this understanding, we need more than just a global view; we need a very detailed measurement."
Getting 'closer to the action'
Joao Teixeira, a researcher at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory who worked on AMF2, explained that most of the existing global climate models do not have the resolution to interpret clouds. Many break the atmosphere into 100-kilometer-by-100-kilometer boxes, too large to reflect how clouds form.
"The fundamental question is really how do you represent the small-scale processes that you cannot explicitly model," he said, adding that clouds are a major source of uncertainty in climate projections.
As the global climate changes, the clouds may also subtly shift, creating different feedbacks and mechanisms in models. "You're not going to have a whole new type of cloud. They will be vaguely the same but occupy different regions," Teixeira said.
AMF2 will also help validate measurements from other sources, like satellites and aircraft. Teixeira said measurements from above clouds often have to use proxies to find out information like temperature and wind speed. Comparing these data with measurements from the sea upward could give scientists a better understanding of the variables at play.
Tracking these parameters at sea also helps fill another critical information void. Most atmospheric measuring stations are on land, but water covers two-thirds of the planet, where air circulation and moisture behave differently. MAGIC gives researchers a narrow but important window to the skies over the ocean that they can extrapolate to other parts of the world.
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3 Comments
Add CommentIt is almost interesting to see climatologists doing real experiments and a shock they even admit climate models dont account for the effects of clouds.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn the end, we can guess the conclusion of this experiment, because warmists don't look for reality, they simply want to either add clouds to be proof somehow warming is human caused or they want to be able to discount clouds having any effect allowing them to not put the effects of clouds in their models.
If the effects of clouds does in fact disprove their theory of CO2 only or in anyway shows evidence theory models are in fact wrong, then the results of this experiment will never be published.
If only we could get more real experiments like this going though, it would be nice to have real evidence for or against global warming caused by evil humans.
What are the results from the first study? The story line here is that they have done this once.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMore lies and wickedly stupid people. I will say this , if this country puts Obama back in then you will get just what you deserve.
In response to the 2 prior posts,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"It is almost interesting to see climatologists doing real experiments and a shock they even admit climate models dont account for the effects of clouds. "
1. These real experiments are more common than you know. The Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Program has multiple mobile facilities that are set up all over the world to collect data to improve climate models.
2. Climate models do account for the effects of cloud. The processes cannot be model due to the complexity/small-scale nature of the processes so they are parameterized. I.e.. They use a simplified process to give a rough estimate of clouds.
"...the results of this experiment will never be published."
1. The data from this experiment and all other sites that ARM maintains, are free for anyone/everyone to use/test. It does not matter what side of the fence you are on.
"If only we could get more real experiments like this..."
Check out ARM.gov, there are experiments like this occurring every year.
In response to stephencoss, I am pretty sure they were referring to another ship-borne deployment in the Arctic Ocean, SHEBA. The processes that occur in the Arctic and tropical regions vastly differ. If you want to read the result of the first study, just search for "SHEBA Experiment" with google scholar.