Operations Updates
ARM Climate Research Facility Operations Update - September 15, 2005
This bimonthly report provides a brief summary of significant accomplishments and activities in the operations area of the ARM Climate Research Facility (ACRF).
From Coastal Clouds to Desert Dust: ARM Mobile Facility Headed to Africa
ACRF operations staff prepare the ARM Mobile Facility in Point Reyes, California, for delivery to Africa, upon the successful conclusion of the first field campaign.
After a successful six-month stint taking cloud and aerosol measurements at Point Reyes National Seashore on the California coast, ACRF Operations staff began packing up the ARM Mobile Facility (AMF) for its next destination: Niamey, Niger, in West Africa. Once there, it will be stationed beneath a geostationary satellite (Meteosat-8) above Niamey, the capital of Niger. Beginning in January 2006, the AMF will obtain comparative cloud and radiative property data as part of an international effort to study the effects of Saharan dust and the West African monsoons.
March 2005 marked the beginning of the AMF's first field campaign, Marine Stratus Radiation Aerosol and Drizzle (MASRAD). Throughout the campaign, numerous guest instruments joined the fray to take advantage of the unique marine environment and infrastructure established for the AMF deployment. As expected (and hoped for), heavy marine clouds moved over the site in July and August. During the month of July, two research aircraft made almost daily flights over the site to collect cloud and aerosol measurements from above, within, and below the clouds. At the conclusion of the field campaign, the science team reported they were extremely happy with the data set collected. A preliminary look at the data showed aerosol counts ranging from low to high, indicating that even the pristine seashore location was heavily influenced by urban aerosols.
The Niamey International Airport will be the site for the next ARM Mobile Facility (AMF) deployment set to begin in January 2006. The AMF will participate in a multi-national field campaign, known as the African Monsoon Multidisciplinary Analysis (AMMA) project, to study the effects of Saharan dust and West African monsoons.
While the AMF has been busy collecting data in California, ACRF operations staff have been busy preparing for the Niamey deployment. Because this is an international experiment, operations staff have been working closely with the U.S. Embassy in Niger to arrange safe and efficient transportation of both people and equipment to and within the Niamey deployment site. Site infrastructure for the AMF at the Niamey airport was established during the past summer, as were instrumentation requirements for a smaller ancillary site (located approximately 60 km away to obtain additional measurements for comparison). Finally, shipping arrangements to pick up the AMF from Point Reyes at the completion of that deployment and delivery to Niger were planned and contracted.
Niger, West Africa, is one of the hottest countries in the world with heat so intense that it often causes the rain to evaporate before it hits the ground. The anticipated heat and dust is of concern to everyone participating in the campaign. Operations staff are currently preparing delicate instruments for the extreme conditions to address these concerns. Niamey, a river port and trade center located on the Niger River in the southwestern region of the country, will be headquarters for the AMF. The one-year deployment will allow the science team to collect data during both the dry and wet (monsoon) seasons. The dry season, with poor visibility conditions from blowing Saharan dust, begins in November—just in time for the AMF to arrive!
More Storage Space, Better Reliability Now at the ACRF Data Management Facility
To support the ever-increasing file storage needs of the ACRF Data Management Facility (DMF) and ACRF Engineering computers, a Network Appliance (NetApp®) file server with 2.68 terabytes, or 2.95 trillion bytes, of highly-reliable and extremely-fast, usable disk storage joined the DMF servers. The NetApp system performs nearly four times faster than the previous file server and is engineered for a higher degree of reliability—critical improvements needed to maintain uptime for ACRF data availability at the DMF.
A NetApp server increases ACRF storage capacity and keeps the data flowing at the Data Management Facility.
The new file server uses its own operating system, Data ONTAPTM, and provides a suite of data management features including the ability to resize and manipulate storage volumes without interrupting access to the data and a simplified backup and recovery process. It has 28 fibre-channel disks connected with two loops for redundancy. The disks are configured into Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) sets—two or more disk drives that work together to disperse the data across the drives for fault tolerance and performance—with "dual-parity," which means that two disks could fail without losing DMF data. The system yields plenty of bandwidth with its 4-gigabit ethernet ports and can be scaled up to 50 terabytes of disk space—space that may be needed as the ACRF continues to grow. The ACRF has seen an approximate 50% increase in users in the past 2 years, based on site visits and computer accounts.
With assistance from a data storage consulting firm, Sanz Inc., selection of the NetApp file server resulted from a thorough engineering review of the DMF requirements and available solutions. Working with Sanz and NetApp engineers, ACRF data management staff installed and tested the system in July and successfully deployed it in August. The previous file server is still in use for data sets that are less-frequently accessed, helping to maximize the use of both file server resources.
