Arizona State University has activated a first-of-its-kind field effort to study the Phoenix-area monsoon, launching a program that university scientists say is designed to close critical gaps in how severe summer storms are forecast in the Valley. The 16-month, Department of Energy-funded project will gather a broad array of observations — about 50 different measurement types — intended to capture how extreme heat, rapid urban expansion and airborne dust interact with monsoon dynamics.
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Vernon Morris, senior associate dean at ASU’s New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences, said the work responds to persistent shortcomings in rainfall prediction and the short lead times forecasters currently have for truly severe weather. "Our models miss a lot when it comes to rain. We don’t have long lead times when it comes to really severe weather," Morris said, explaining why researchers are collecting simultaneous measurements at the surface, in the lower atmosphere and up to the stratosphere.
The study will concentrate on the Salt River Valley, a landscape shaped by cities, industry, agriculture and recurring wildfire scars — all of which can alter local meteorology. Team leaders said the observational campaign is intended to be openly shared so that scientists, the National Weather Service and the Department of Energy can use the new data to extend warning times for the monsoon’s most dangerous outcomes. Morris highlighted the range of hazards targeted by the effort: "So dust events, flash flooding events, heavy rain, virga, lightning, extreme winds that come and are associated with both the monsoon and dust storms, air quality aspects as well."
A mix of traditional and new technologies will be used to assemble the observational picture. Weather balloons will lift sensors through the column of air, a newly acquired state-of-the-art precipitation radar will scan storm structures, and autonomous platforms such as drones will carry instruments closer to ground-level processes. Morris said recent advances in both space-based and surface-based observing systems make it possible to integrate those diverse data streams in ways that were not previously achievable.
"I think that’s critical just because of the way systems develop here," Morris said, describing how the Salt River Valley’s environmental complexity complicates forecasting. He noted that dust storms can accelerate local convective development and that the monsoon can approach from multiple directions, depending on broader-scale circulation patterns. "A dust storm can spin up and the monsoon may be coming or synoptically coming from a different direction. Fires are always sort of pocketed around us … So, how do these sort of spatial arrangements of environmental phenomena affect the Valley?" he asked.
ASU team members hold and prepare a large weather balloon with its orange trailing ribbon at the university launch site during 2026 monsoon-season testing.
Researchers say this is the first time such an extensive, multi-platform dataset has been assembled for the Phoenix area — and possibly for the broader Southwest region. The project’s full name, Desert-Urban SysTem IntegratEd AtmospherIc Monsoon, is shortened to DUSTIEAIM and pronounced "dusty aim." Organizers contend the campaign’s spatially dense measurements will capture how urban expansion and other human-driven changes to the landscape are influencing storm formation and evolution.
A technician secures a weather balloon to the launch rig at ASU ahead of ascent as part of research operations during the 2026 monsoon season.
Beyond the immediate goal of improving short-term forecasts for heavy rain and high winds, researchers said the data products will be useful to a broad set of stakeholders. Model output derived from the campaign could inform decisions by residents, businesses, energy providers, developers and farmers on issues ranging from water management and infrastructure planning to emergency response for flash flooding and dust-related hazards. Morris stressed the importance of combining observations from satellites, ground radars, drones and balloon-borne sensors to produce those model-ready datasets: "We’re just now coming into technologies that we can stitch all the data together, space-based technologies, sort of surface-based technologies with our radars, and then these sort of autonomous technologies in terms of the sensors that we can put on drones and on balloons," he said.
The research team emphasized that the Phoenix region presents a particularly complex monsoon environment because storms can be fed from several source regions. "We’re the hottest, largest, fastest growing metropolitan area in the nation," Morris said, adding that the monsoon can originate from the Gulf of Mexico or from the Pacific Ocean, creating variable pathways for moisture and convective development. By documenting the spatial arrangements of dust, burn scars, urban heat and moisture sources, investigators say DUSTIEAIM will provide a more complete basis for testing and improving regional forecast models.
ASU researchers and their collaborators plan to make the campaign’s results publicly available so that operational forecasters and federal partners can incorporate the findings into warning systems. The 16-month schedule was designed to span varying stages of the monsoon cycle and capture a range of event types. Balin Overstolz McNair contributed to this report.
The DUSTIEAIM campaign, which began data collection on June 1, 2026, is led by Allison Aiken of Los Alamos National Laboratory in collaboration with ASU. According to the DOE's ARM user facility, after the first month researchers report accumulating observations from the mobile facility and sub-studies on aerosols and land-atmosphere interactions, with all data to be openly available for improving regional models and warnings.
ARM began campaign data verification on May 16, 2026, with staff reviewing incoming instrument datastreams through the end of May to ensure sensors and systems were configured correctly before full operations.
DOE/ARM campaign documentation and the DUSTIEAIM science plan describe the effort as an 18‑month deployment running roughly April 2026 through September 2027, with the ARM Mobile Facility (AMF1) serving as the central observatory and measurements planned at two sites including a primary Phoenix‑area location.
A named sub‑study, DROPLET (Dust and Regional Organic aerosol Profiling for Land‑atmosphere Exchange and Transport for DUSTIEAIM), will deploy ARM’s tethered balloon system to sample aerosols from urban, agricultural and wildfire/prescribed‑burn sources, with a concentrated field phase from June 1 through September 30, 2026, led by Daniel Feldman.
Los Alamos National Laboratory conducted pre‑deployment beta testing and instrument hardening to prepare hardware for Phoenix summer conditions, and LANL is managing the ARM Mobile Facility operations for the campaign.