Data Developers Meeting Helps Align ARM Staff with Facility Goals

 
Published: 17 October 2016

Sessions indicate the ARM reconfiguration is on track, but there is more work ahead

Giving an overview of accomplishments, user feedback, and goals is ARM Technical Director Jim Mather.
Giving an overview of accomplishments, user feedback, and goals is ARM Technical Director Jim Mather.

During the last week of September, about 55 ARM Climate Research Facility staff members gathered at Oak Ridge National Laboratory for the annual Developers Meeting to discuss current activities, solve problems, and better align ARM operations with the Facility’s long-term goals.

The meeting began with plenary and highlights sessions covering progress on the reconfiguration outlined in the Decadal Vision, which calls for a multi-phase effort to provide more robust scientific data and processes that can more easily be incorporated into climate models.

User Input Key

ARM Technical Director Jim Mather gave a program overview and shared feedback the Facility has received from the User Executive Committee, which is made up of scientific users of ARM data who meet monthly to provide their recommendations on enhancing the ARM user experience. Members are selected according to popular vote by the users according to science areas.

Ideas for updates to the ARM Facility to maintain its capabilities at the forefront of climate science also come directly from external science meetings in the form of workshop reports, white papers, and science priorities of partner organizations. Mather noted that input from workshops was particularly valuable in fiscal year (FY) 2016 around unmanned aerial system (UAS) operations, Atmospheric System Research (ASR) science focus areas, and the Large-Eddy Simulation (LES) ARM Symbiotic Simulation and Observation, or LASSO, modeling project.

Measurements to Modeling

William Gustafson of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
William Gustafson is co-leading the LASSO project.

The ARM Facility is over halfway into the LASSO pilot project, which ties together observation data and high-resolution LES modeling to support the study of atmospheric processes, the improvement of observational retrievals, and parameterizations of clouds, aerosols, and radiation in climate models. The combined observational and modeling elements from this two-year pilot will enable a new level of scientific inquiry.

<http://www.pnnl.gov/science/staff/staff_info.asp?staff_num=5716″ target=”_blank”>Bill Gustafson, LASSO co-lead, shared information with meeting attendees on LASSO’s August Alpha 1 release. Users can access the data through the LASSO Bundle Browser, a web application that provides a convenient method for researchers to only select the data they find relevant.

Setting ARM Priorities

Jennifer Comstock, Engineering and Process Manager, holds open the door for other ARM staff getting a tour of the ARM servers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory during the annual Developers Meeting.
Jennifer Comstock, Engineering and Process Manager, holds open the door for other ARM staff getting a tour of the ARM data servers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

A report on setting ARM priorities and milestones for FY 2017 was provided by ARM Engineering and Process Manager Jennifer Comstock. Comstock prioritizes new needs identified by the UEC and other constituent groups, such as the Science and Infrastructure Steering Committee, Radar Science and Operations Group, Aerosol Measurement and Science Group, Unmanned Aerial System Advisory Panel, and Modeling Advisory Panel, as well as ideas for updates to the ARM Facility that come directly from external science meetings.

Shaocheng Xie, ARM Data Life Cycle and Architecture Group, presented on activities that ARM, ASR, and Accelerated Climate Modeling for Energy (ACME) are working on together, including the call for Climate Model Development and Validation (CMDV) Projects.

Ten breakout sessions covered a variety of data/infrastructure topics ranging from cyber security to data quality to metadata processes that were identified by the ARM Architecture and Services Strategy Team (ASST). The ASST was created about five years ago in response to a need to draw together the diverse functional areas and institutions represented in the ARM data infrastructure. Led by Giri Prakash, Manager of the ARM Data Life Cycle and Architecture Group, the ASST includes representatives from data functional elements from around the ARM Facility and meets on a weekly basis to discuss and advance issues related to the ARM data infrastructure.

Giri Prakash in front of the Titan Super Computer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee
Giri Prakash, ARM Architecture and Services Strategy Team Manager, leads the ARM Architecture and Services Strategy Team.

The final half-day session at this year’s two-and-a-half day meeting provided the opportunity for participants to self-organize additional breakout sessions or small problem-solving discussions, providing a unique opportunity for ARM data and infrastructure staff who work across nine different national laboratories and other organization to interact face-to-face.

Participants in the meeting, which was hosted this year by the ARM Data Center, included representatives from ARM’s External Data Center, Data Quality Office, Data Archive, and Data Management Facility, as well as infrastructure management, operations staff, and scientists.

# # #

The ARM Climate Research Facility is a national scientific user facility funded through the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science. The ARM Facility is operated by nine Department of Energy national laboratories.