From the User Executive Committee (UEC) Chair

 
Published: 9 June 2021

The UEC is eager to engage with you. This is a quarterly message from the UEC Chair.

New subgroups and connecting with the UEC during the joint meeting

Allison C. Aiken takes a break in her home office
Allison C. Aiken, Los Alamos National Laboratory

Hello! Things really are starting to pick up the pace again as we are already into June. Can you believe it is almost time for the Joint ARM User Facility/Atmospheric System Research (ASR) Principal Investigators Meeting?

Since the last blog, the UEC has made a lot of progress on a number of fronts. We formed four subgroups to continue previous work and start new efforts to broaden community outreach. We have also embraced a new normal with our virtual meetings, expanding them to include online discussion forums such as the new UEC Slack channel. Several of our members also celebrated Earth Day, filming their own selfie videos for social media about what conducting environmental science means to them.

A big thank you is due to four of our members who graciously volunteered to lead our UEC subgroups, which have already met a few times and presented progress to the full UEC and ARM leadership.

The first two subgroups below are focused on enhancing communication with different scientific communities.

Jennifer Delamere at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, is leading the subgroup for enhancing communication with the satellite community. This subgroup has already identified areas that could be used to enhance interaction by adding information to ARM web pages and ARM Data Discovery and by the development of resource guides.

Susannah Burrows at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory is leading the subgroup for enhancing communication with the modeling and Energy Exascale Earth System Model (E3SM) communities. This subgroup is developing new ideas and approaches to overcome identified challenges, such as bridging multiple scales, representation issues, and translating measurements and models to achieve direct intercomparisons.

Scott Collis at Argonne National Laboratory is leading a subgroup for improving outreach to undergraduate institutions with an emphasis on increasing the diversity of future ARM users. Because this topic is new for the UEC, the subgroup is defining deliverables and searching for new strategies to engage with existing student programs within atmospheric science.

Daniel Feldman at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory is leading the subgroup for measurement uncertainty and communicating calibrations. Knowing this is an ongoing and historically challenging effort, the subgroup is working on formalized recommendations for ARM.

The current User Executive Committee (UEC) is divided into four subgroups to address new and ongoing UEC efforts. Those four subgroups focus on enhancing communication with the satellite community, enhancing communication with the modeling/E3SM community, undergraduate outreach and increasing diversity, and measurement uncertainty/communicating calibrations.
The current User Executive Committee (UEC) is divided into four subgroups to address new and ongoing UEC efforts.

Joint Meeting Plans

During the joint meeting this year, we will host a networking event from 4:15 to 5 p.m. Eastern time Monday, June 21. We will also have a UEC poster during poster session 1, from 2 to 3 p.m. Eastern on Tuesday, June 22.

Come learn more about the UEC and the new subgroups at our poster. We look forward to chatting with you on Slack during the poster session. We also want to thank the ARM Communications team for providing the new virtual poster formats. We found the six-slide poster template works very well in the virtual era.

If you are new to the ARM community, please sign up to join us for our networking event, which we are hosting to kick off the meeting during the first networking session on Monday. (There will be informal networking sessions to close out each day of the meeting, and all meeting attendees can go to those sessions.) The UEC event will be similar to the in-person networking lunches that the UEC hosted at previous joint meetings.

UEC members will be available for informal, small roundtable discussions. We are happy to chat with people who are new to ARM and looking to gain information about the facility. Come ask us anything about ARM. There will also be a help desk during the session to direct you to the right resources if you don’t want to just pop into a table during the event.

To sign up for the networking event, please email Kim Stewart (kim.stewart@pnnl.gov) using the subject line “UEC networking session” by close of business Tuesday, June 15. And please don’t forget to register for the meeting, either!

For new users who would like to learn more about ARM before the meeting, you can check out this page of ARM resources.

We know the meeting is busy, but if you have a minute, stop by to share a virtual hello with us. And remember, you always can send us a note if you find the meeting has flown by and you didn’t get a chance to chat with us during the meeting.

Best wishes to all for a great 2021 virtual meeting!

Sincerely,
Allison Aiken