Radiative Observations of the Marine Boundary Layer on the Coast of Tasmania

The Deptartment of Energy's ARM Mobile Facility (AMF2) is currently deployed at the Kennaook/Cape Grim Baseline Air Pollution Station on the northwestern tip of Tasmania, Australia, as part of the CAPE-k field campaign. The facility provides cloud and precipitation observations from a suite of ground-based remote sensors and in situ instruments. The science goals of the campaign are to better understand the cloud radiative effects and cloud feedbacks in this underobserved region, in order to improve weather and climate models. The observations are taking place between April 2024 - September 2025.

The AMF2 includes the Marine Atmospheric Emitted Radiance Interferometer (M-AERI), which measures downwelling thermal infrared spectral radiance with high accuracy. The hyperspectral observations can be used to obtain profiles of temperature and water vapor, as well as microphysical and optical properties of clouds and aerosols. At the CAPE-k field site, the M-AERI has been positioned on an elevated cliff edge with a clear view of the clean air sector in the Southern Ocean to the west. In this geometry, using the elevation angle scanning capability of the M-AERI, the instrument can obtain estimates of the sea surface skin temperature in addition to high time resolution profiles of the temperature and humidity structure of the marine boundary layer.

We report initial observations from the M-AERI instrument from the first half of the CAPE-k field campaign.