Summary of the ACRF User Site Visits, Archive Accounts, and Research Computer Accounts for the Period of October 1, 2003 - June 30, 2004. (Larger image.)

Far exceeding the established milestone of 800 users in fiscal year 2004, at the end of June the ACRF reported a cumulative total of 940 users for the year so far. The U.S. Department of Energy requires its national user facilities to report facility use by total visitor days—broken down by institution type, gender, race, citizenship, visitor role, visit purpose, and facility—for actual visitors and for active user research computer accounts. For research computer accounts (or “virtual visitors”), an individual is counted only once per account, even though they may open and close an account several times to obtain data from one or more sites. However, users are counted each time they physically visit a site, because many visitors participate in multiple, unrelated experiments or events.

While the third quarter typically generates higher user activity due to actions resulting from the annual ARM Science Team Meeting each spring and the start of graduate student research projects, general user activity has steadily increased throughout the year. Similarly, the volume of data storage and distribution continues to climb. For more detailed statistics on users and data availability, see the ACRF Operations Quarterly Report.

Mark Ivey rejoins the ARM Program as NSA Site Operations Manager!

Congratulations to Dr. Mark Ivey, who started his new position July 26 as Site Operations Manager for the ARM Climate Research Facility’s (ACRF) North Slope of Alaska locale. Mark started out with the ARM Program as the lead engineer at the Tropical Western Pacific (TWP) locale, where he designed the TWP infrastructure. He left after the sites were installed, but has been a consulting affiliate to the TWP office at Los Alamos while employed as a senior research engineer and adjunct professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Montana State University in Bozeman. His significant contributions at the outset of the ARM Program make his return a big plus for the ACRF infrastructure. Welcome back, Mark!

There’s still time to submit your abstract for the 85th American Meteorological Society (AMS) Annual Meeting, January 9-13, 2005, in San Diego, California. For more information on participating, see the call for papers.

Reminder: The American Meteorological Society’s 16th Symposium on Boundary Layers and Turbulence and 13th Conference on Interactions of the Sea and Atmosphere will be held August 9-13 in Portland, Maine. For more information and session agendas, see http://www.ametsoc.org/meet/FAINST/portland04.html.

As shown in this aerial photo of Oliktok Point, Alaska, the USAF Long Range Radar Station—also known as Dew Line Station—is situated at the edge of the Arctic Ocean. Instrumentation for the ARM Program's M-PACE experiment will be located just south of the station, near the aircraft hangar. (Photo courtesy of Aeromap U.S.)

After more than a year and a half of planning, proposals, and paperwork, management staff at the ACRF North Slope of Alaska (NSA) locale recently received permission from the United States Air Force (USAF) to use their facilities at Oliktok Point, Alaska, for the ARM Program’s upcoming Mixed-Phase Arctic Cloud Experiment (M-PACE). In addition, in June, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) granted approval for the use of restricted airspace (albeit at night) in Oliktok during the experiment. Gaining the necessary approvals reflects a strong commitment to cooperation between the various agencies, and represents a big step forward in preparing for the experiment, which is scheduled to begin in September 2004.

The objective of M-PACE is to collect a focused set of observations for examining the microphysical and radiative transfer process of mixed-phase clouds, which dominate low-lying cloud systems in the arctic. An important part of the experimental plan is to fly an instrumented, tethered balloon to make in situ measurements in the clouds while observing the same clouds from instrumentation on the ground. Oliktok Point was identified as the only place on the NSA that the FAA would agree to for flying tethered balloons in clouds. This led to the hunt for an accompanying ground-based instrument location. A commercial location was considered and rejected, leaving the USAF Oliktok Point Long Range Radar Station the only option. In April 2003, the first briefing to USAF officials at Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage, Alaska, took place. Thus began a year of subsequent administrative actions, concluding with a final USAF permit signed by the Department of Energy. When received back at USAF, their additional signature will seal the deal.

In spite of the lengthy legal requirements, NSA staff managed to gain the necessary approvals spanning from Anchorage to Hawaii and points between. On the outside chance another ARM experiment might need to use the USAF facilities and FAA restricted air space permit for Oliktok, both permission are good for the next five years!

As shown in this partial screen capture, the Real Time Monitoring and Control feature displays data that allows local observers to quickly check the status of the instrument system. (Larger image.)

As part of ongoing effort to upgrade data loggers and logging systems throughout the ACRF, new Campbell Loggers (version CR23X) are being installed at the Tropical Western Pacific (TWP) and at the North Slope of Alaska (NSA) locales. In fall 2003, Campbell Loggers for the surface meteorology systems at NSA were installed. In June 2004, Campbell Loggers were installed for the surface meteorology (SMET), sky radiation (SKYRAD) and ground radiation (GRNDRAD) systems at the TWP Darwin site. Next in line for logger upgrades are the TWP sites of Manus and Nauru, and the SKYRAD and GNDRAD systems at NSA’s Barrow and Atqasuk sites.

The new data loggers, developed by Campbell Scientific, Inc., replace the existing PC-based data collection systems and the ZENO® 3200 Dataloggers from Coastal Environmental Systems, Inc. Data from each of the Campbell Loggers is collected by one main on-site computer using Campbell Scientific’s LoggerNet software. Using Real Time Monitoring and Control (a feature of the LoggerNet software), displays are generated that provide an instantaneous readout of the data, allowing local observers and technicians to make sure the instruments and sensors are working as they should. In addition, remote administration (RAdmin) software is loaded onto each main computer. This lets remote users log on to the computer to view what is happening and, if needed, download files or modify the computer, display, loggers, etc., as if they were sitting in front of it. This capability greatly enhances the speed with which repairs and troubleshooting can be performed.

For each of the ARM Climate Research Facility’s sites, the External Data Center (XDC) maintains a surface characterization database, which includes soil and land use data and satellite data at varying spatial and spectral resolutions. New site surface characterization data and infrastructure meta data will be collected to help select sites for ARM Mobile Facility deployments and to update the fixed climate research sites with the latest information. In addition to maintaining the database, XDC services also encompass producing customized geographic maps and analyses. Examples of products that could be provided upon request include:

• Characterization of potential deployment sites for the ARM Mobile Facility, including climatology maps, air space maps, terrain and land use maps, transportation maps, and power grid maps
• Geographic datasets of the fixed sites and mobile facility deployment sites, including land use/land cover data, soil data, satellite images, hydrology, and transportation data
• Derive unrestricted secondary products from (restricted) Multispectral Thermal Imager (MTI) satellite data (e.g., seasonal land use/land cover map for the Central Facility)
• Produce average gridded data from satellite images as input to models (e.g., soil texture values for a 25 km grid covering the Southern Great Plains site)
• Provide interpretation between spatial data and researcher’s needs (e.g., “What are the differences in ground cover between Barrow and Atqasuk?”).

With the designation of the ARM Climate Research Facility as a national user facility, XDC services are now available to not only ARM scientists but to the national and international research community. Contact Alice Cialella for more information.

April was a record month for the ACRF Data Archive, with 1.2 terabytes (or 1.2 trillion bytes) of data delivered to customers, and about 1 terabyte of data delivered and stored in the Archive. This impressive statistic represents 450,000 files retrieved—roughly double the largest previous month of data distribution! This trend continued in May, with about 30% more files delivered than normal.

The Archive supports the scientific research and field campaigns of ARM Program researchers and collaborating ACRF researchers by storing and distributing large quantities of measurement data and related information collected from instruments in the field. These data are used by researchers to investigate atmospheric radiation balance and cloud feedback processes, which are critical to improving models that simulate climate change. Recent data storage increases are due to enhanced instrument systems, collection and networking systems, and data processing capacity improvements. The rise in data distribution appears to be widely spread over the available data streams.

In two separate CD collections, ARM Program collaborators at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have produced a compendium of cloud microphysical properties from atmospheric research conducted in the Arctic. The two collections include: Cloud Microphysical Properties from Barrow, Alaska, Version 1 (August 2003), a 3-CD collection which covers data retrieved in 2000, 2001, and 2002; and Cloud Microphysical Properties from the Surface Heat Budget of the Arctic Ocean (SHEBA) Project, Version 2 (January 2004). ARM data sets and contributions in development of different retrieval techniques were used in both efforts.

A suite of instruments from the ARM Program and NOAA's Environmental Technology Laboratory collect arctic weather data. (Photo credit: SHEBA Project).

Radar, radiometer, and rawinsonde data from ARM’s data archive—collected from instruments deployed at the ARM Climate Research Facility’s North Slope of Alaska (NSA) site—were used exclusively for the 3-year Barrow cloud observation retrieval effort. Each of the three CDs contains information on cloud water content, and droplet/crystal size based on 35-GHz radar measurements. For the SHEBA Project, infrared and microwave radiometer data sets—also acquired from instrumentation at ARM’s NSA site—were used to complete long-term, Arctic cloud microphysical data sets.

With long term data sets provided by instrumentation at ARM Climate Research Facility sites, scientific collaborations such as this allow researchers to refine specific elements—such as cloud properties—used in computer models that help improve simulations of the earth’s climate.

The Southern Great Plains (SGP) Educational Outreach Program is hosting an EarthStorm Weather Institute for Teachers on July 12-15, 2004, at the University of Oklahoma’s Sarkeys Energy Center in Norman. In the EarthStorm Weather Institute, meteorologists from the Norman area and educators from Kansas and Oklahoma will share ideas and resources for teaching meteorological concepts and will establish long-term associations supporting science education. This free four-day workshop will give K-12 teachers an opportunity to investigate weather and improve their skills in preparing students to design and implement science fair projects. More information is online (http://k12.ocs.ou.edu/teachers/workshops/default.html).

The SGP Educational Outreach Program is administered by and in partnership with the Oklahoma Climate Survey, the University of Oklahoma, and the Oklahoma Mesonet.

The External Data Center (XDC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory has a position available for an applications analyst (term appointment) in the Environmental Sciences Department. This position requires a bachelor’s degree in computer science or a physical science (atmospheric science preferred), and experience working in a Unix environment (Solaris or Linux) and programming in C, IDL, Perl, or FORTRAN. Familiarity with hierarchical data formats (netCDF or HDF) is desired. Responsibilities include coding data-conversion, analysis and display applications to collect, standardize, document and archive data collected at the External Data Center. This position has been closed.