ARM Facility Shares Return on Science Investments

 
Published: 9 May 2013
The Bolger Center—a former U.S. Postal Service training center—hosted the fourth annual ASR Science Team Meeting in March.

To quote Ben Franklin, “If a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take it away from him. An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.”

ARM Climate Research Facility staff who attended the fourth annual Atmospheric System Research (ASR) Science Team Meeting in April received a healthy dose of interest in March! With over 350 attendees presenting nearly 250 posters, the wealth of atmospheric climate science knowledge would have made Franklin (a former post master general) very proud.

Once again, the ASR annual meeting provided an opportunity for scientists and ARM Facility staff to gather and review progress and plans related to their collaborations using ARM facilities and data. Facility staff presented posters and presentations, hosted breakout sessions, and joined numerous sessions related to new sites, field campaigns, and ARM data. Wanda Ferrell, ARM Facility Program Director, helped kick off the meeting in the opening plenary session Monday morning with an overview of the ARM Facility and its activities.

Raymond McCord teaches interested participants how to use the new ARM Data Discovery Browser at the ASR Science Team Meeting in March.

New to the meeting this year, the ARM Data Discovery and NetCDF Tutorial was hosted by Raymond McCord, ARM Data Archive Manager, and Jim Mather, ARM Technical Director. These two hands-on tutorials helped participants learn how to use the new ARM Data Archive Data Discovery Browser and how to work with ARM NetCDF files. Because of its popularity, this session was held twice so more could attend and avoid schedule conflicts.

Other breakout sessions hosted by Facility staff included a radar session, an instrument team meeting, and an update on the third ARM Mobile Facility (AMF3) extended deployment in Oliktok Point, Alaska. In addition, ARM Facility staff presented posters covering instrumentation, value-added products, and online data and software tools.

AMF2 Site Manager Nicki Hickmon takes a break from sessions and posters to catch up on some email.Complimenting the ARM breakout sessions, ASR scientists led seven breakouts to discuss ARM field campaigns, ranging from the upcoming GreenOceanAmazon (GOAMAZON) to the current Two-Column Aerosol Project (TCAP) to the past Carbonaceous Aerosols and Radiative Effects Study (CARES). Additional facility campaigns, such as Routine AAF Clouds with Low Optical Water Depths (CLOWD) Optical Radiative Observations (RACORO), Small Particles In Cirrus (SPARTICUS), Storm Peak Laboratory Cloud Property Validation Experiment (STORMVEX), and Radiative Heating in Underexplored Bands Campaign-II (RHUBC-II), were represented during the two poster sessions held on Tuesday and Wednesday afternoon.

For the full agenda, presentations, poster abstracts and posters, visit the ASR meeting website; fall working group meeting dates will be available soon.