ARM Summer School Back in Session: Open Science in the Forest

Published: 24 June 2025

Editor’s note: Max Grover and Scott Collis of Argonne National Laboratory provided the following post.

Over the past 30-plus years, data collected by the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) User Facility have grown in size and complexity. In order to continue improving our understanding of our planet and the impact of earth system processes on energy abundance, we must build the workforce of the future. As part of meeting this challenge, from May 19 to 23, 2025, ARM hosted its seventh summer school, “Open Science in the Forest.” That week, 21 students and 16 instructors gathered at the University of Alabama in Huntsville to discuss open science in ARM and how open-source tools can be applied to answer scientific questions pertaining to ARM’s nearby Bankhead National Forest (BNF) atmospheric observatory.

Open science, consisting of open-source software, open data, open educational materials and open publishing, allows ARM to pursue the gold standard of reproducible science and makes knowledge available to all—students, researchers, private industry, and beyond.

The summer school also featured a site visit to the BNF observatory, where students got to explore the site science and operations firsthand. The multiyear deployment of the BNF observatory in a Southeastern U.S. forested environment was established based on scientific priorities outlined in a report from the 2018 ARM Mobile Facility Workshop (U.S. Department of Energy [DOE] 2019).

Open Science Training

The “Open Science in the Forest” summer school theme has close ties with several themes in ARM’s 2020 Decadal Vision, mainly the second and third themes (Mather et al. 2021):

2. Achieve the maximum scientific impact of ARM measurements through increased engagement with observational data by ARM staff, including the application of advanced data analytical techniques.

3. Enable advanced data analytics and community use of complex ARM data sets through the advancement of computing infrastructure and data analysis.

The week consisted of a combination of lectures and hands-on exercises, all focused around training attendees on how to combine ARM-supported open-source tools and data collected from the BNF observatory. In the spirit of open science, most of the lectures had at least some component focused on Jupyter Notebooks (computational documents that contain both software and text describing the results), which students could adapt for their own workflows.

BNF Site Visit

Early in the week, the students and instructors had a unique opportunity to visit the BNF observatory. This helped students understand how data are collected and the special mission of the observatory, integrating atmospheric and earth system science.

The BNF is unique as it consists of several distinct sites both inside and outside forested areas, including a C-band scanning radar that remotely measures precipitation, a 140-foot (42.7-meter) instrumented tower capable of measuring two-way land-atmosphere interactions at multiple heights, and the main ARM Mobile Facility instrument site with world-class remote sensing instruments. Students met experts familiar with the instruments they would be analyzing data from.

ARM and the BNF bring together various parts of the scientific community, from specialists at DOE national labs and universities to local staff from Alabama who make the site happen. Students were able to interact with them all.

Tying It All Together

In the classroom, students formed their own groups, developing a unique science question or set of questions related to the BNF observatory, closely tied to the associated site science plan. Here is a list of the projects students worked on throughout the week:

• Aerosol Cloud Interactions Deposition (ACID)
• BNF Deep Convection
• Land Atmosphere Interactions
• Boundary Layer in Multiple Places (BLIMP).

Students refined their projects during the week, culminating in an open-science cookbook, a citable scientific work for which each student received credit.

ARM’s open-source Python packages, mainly the Python ARM Radar Toolkit (Py-ART) and the Atmospheric data Community Toolkit (ACT), were used heavily throughout the four project cookbooks.

The students presented their work to the broader group at the end of the week, returning to their home institutions with a better understanding of ARM data and tools, related science questions, and how to collaborate using best practices for open science to increase the impact of ARM data and tools. All projects highlighted the unique design of the BNF observatory and its role in improving earth system simulations that are vital for energy infrastructure planning.

This year’s summer school brought together students and instructors from 26 institutions. Students’ experience levels ranged from undergraduate to postdoctoral scholars. Instructors ranged from early to late career, representing DOE Office of Science national laboratories and educational institutions.

Thanks to Those Who Made It Possible!

ARM staff, as well as investigators funded by DOE’s Atmospheric System Research (ASR) program area, were instrumental in the summer school’s success. They represent the full data life cycle within ARM, from instrument mentors, data infrastructure developers, site operation leads, and value-added product developers to science users. They contributed to planning the event and teaching and mentoring students during the week in Huntsville.

Here is a list of the instructors and mentors who made the event possible:

• Scott Collis, Argonne National Laboratory
• Max Grover, Argonne National Laboratory
• Scott Giangrande, Brookhaven National Laboratory
• Brenda Dolan, Colorado State University
• Michael Giansiracusa, Oak Ridge National Laboratory
• Sébastien Biraud, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
• Mark Spychala, Argonne National Laboratory
• Joe O’Brien, Argonne National Laboratory
• Tim Wagner, University of Wisconsin-Madison
• Bill Gustafson, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL)
• Patty Campbell, Argonne National Laboratory
• Thijs Heus, Cleveland State University
• Chongai Kuang, Brookhaven National Laboratory
• Tim Juliano, National Science Foundation National Center for Atmospheric Research
• Sid Gupta, Argonne National Laboratory
• Sean Freeman, University of Alabama in Huntsville.

Special thanks to Argonne’s Jeri Knepper, the ARM Communications Team at PNNL, the University of Alabama in Huntsville, the BNF site management and operations team, and the ARM User Facility.

2024 Summer School Featured by BAMS

In late 2024, the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (BAMS) published an early online paper on the 2024 ARM Open Science Summer School in Cleveland, Ohio, authored by the school’s mentors and instructors. Hosted at Cleveland State University in May 2024, it was the first ARM summer school that focused primarily on open science and the use of open-source tools to analyze ARM measurements and share results. For more details, read the full BAMS paper.