ARM Colleagues Go South for Science
ARM Climate Research Facility data from the Green Ocean Amazon (GoAmazon2014/15) field campaign were a focus of an open science data management workshop in late October in São Paulo, Brazil.
Giri Prakash, ARM Data Services and Operations manager from Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), gave the keynote address for the workshop at the Engineering School of the University of São Paulo.
This third workshop in a series on open data for science brought together researchers and data professionals from several science and information technology disciplines. About 135 participants attended in person or remotely via the web. The workshop focused on analysis of ARM GoAmazon2014/15 data collected near Manacapuru in northwestern Brazil. GoAmazon2014/15 looked at aerosol and cloud life cycles, particularly the susceptibility to cloud-aerosol-precipitation interactions, within the Amazon Basin.
Presenters from other American institutions, including the U.S. Geological Survey and the University of Tennessee, discussed topics such as science data life cycle, planning, and policies.
Prakash’s keynote address, entitled ARM Data, Tools, and Research Computing Services, covered access and analysis of ARM GoAmazon2014/15 data. During the workshop, Prakash and ORNL colleague Bhargavi Krishna, an ARM scientific software engineer, conducted a two-day training course for about 80 participants. Attendees learned to access, extract, and visualize ARM data using various big-data analytics technologies, including Apache Cassandra and Node.js server. Again, GoAmazon2014/15 data were the centerpiece.
At the end of the course, presenters wrote up their notes on participant performance, observations on what worked best, and potential improvements. Among lessons learned, says Prakash, were “the need for high-quality metadata and descriptions for better data discoverability and use.”
Prakash says the workshop achieved three good outcomes:
- refreshing and extending ARM’s collaboration with the Brazilian research community, revitalizing the connections forged during GoAmazon2014/15, and planning future joint projects
- exposing a new crop of Brazilian and international scientists to ARM data and their rich potential for further research
- empowering graduate and undergraduate students with cutting-edge management and analysis techniques for large-scale, open scientific data.
Prakash found the experience exhilarating and valuable: “It was a great opportunity to promote ARM’s approach to open data management.”
# # #The ARM Climate Research Facility is a DOE Office of Science user facility. The ARM Facility is operated by nine DOE national laboratories, including Oak Ridge National Laboratory.