Every year, destructive storms cause billions of dollars of damage to homes, businesses, crops, and critical infrastructure. But a new research campaign will provide insights to improve how we predict these storms and deepen our understanding of the Earth system processes that fuel them.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) user facility will deploy advanced instruments across the Midwest to study how variations in land surface – from farms to cities to lakes – influence severe weather events, including fast-moving summertime derechos, damaging winds, freezing rain and winter storms. The Dynamics of Evapotranspiration, Radiative Exchange, and Convection in High-impact Organized Storms (DERECHOS) campaign will focus on a corridor stretching from Ames, Iowa, to Chicago, Illinois, a region that includes irrigated farmlands, rural areas, and one of the nation's largest cities that is situated by a lake as big as a sea.

The DERECHOS campaign will deploy an extensive network of atmospheric instruments across Iowa and Illinois. The centerpiece will be the ARM Mobile Facility at Iowa State University’s Muscatine Island and South East Research Farms.

The ARM Mobile Facility is a world-class, redeployable observatory that consists of instruments, shelters, and data and communications systems. ARM instruments operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with on-site technicians monitoring the facility around the clock.

Additional instruments will be placed at Northern Illinois University and at various locations across the Chicago area. The campaign will also use data from existing weather monitoring networks in Iowa and Illinois.

The research team will use artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to analyze the enormous amounts of data collected and even direct real-time observations. They will also use a sophisticated DOE computer model called the Energy Exascale Earth System Model (E3SM) as a digital laboratory to test their ideas about how the Earth system works.

Understanding how land characteristics affect severe weather could lead to better forecasts for communities, improved seasonal predictions for farming, and better preparations for securing power grids and other critical infrastructure against severe weather.

The DERECHOS campaign is supported by the DOE Office of Science’s Biological and Environmental Research program.

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