Operations Updates
ARM Climate Research Facility Operations Update - November 30, 2004
This bimonthly report provides a brief summary of significant accomplishments and activities in the operations area of the ARM Climate Research Facility (ACRF).
Scientists Convene in Australia to Plan International Cloud Experiment
During TWP-ICE, cloud property data will be obtained from numerous research aircraft and a network of surface-based remote sensing sites, including a ship operating in the Timor Sea and numerous ground sites in a 200 km diameter around the ACRF site in Darwin, Australia.
Coming from as far away as Italy, Switzerland, and the United States, a 45 member team gathered in Darwin, Australia, in mid-November to discuss plans for an extensive field campaign scheduled to begin in early 2006. Key participants in the Tropical Warm Pool-International Cloud Experiment (TWP-ICE) currently include researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy's Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Program, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, the United Kingdom, and a group sponsored by the European Union. In addition, several United States, Australian, Canadian, and European universities are supporting the experiment. Both the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) and the Regional BOM Office, which will host the aircraft operations and be heavily involved in forecasting efforts, respectively, are enthusiastic supporters of the experiment.
Because of the extensive travel required to bring the team together, only a small number of planning meetings will occur. This week-long meeting was largely devoted to operational and logistics issues, with two afternoons devoted to breakout sessions for discussing aircraft, ground site, and forecasting activities. Another day was set aside for participants to tour the RAAF facilities, followed by a visit to the ACRF site in Darwin. About 25 people from various backgrounds visited the site, which has hosted very few visitors because of its remote location. For many, it was their first visit to any ACRF site, and provided the opportunity for a first hand introduction to the ARM science program. A smaller group of ARM and BOM researchers spent the last two days traveling to a number of the ground sites to collect information about the sites where staff will live while launching radiosondes during the experiment.
Tropical cirrus clouds have a large impact on their environment, but their dynamics and properties are poorly understood. Therefore, the experimental goal of TWP-ICE is to describe the properties of tropical cirrus and the convection that leads to their formation. To obtain this information, the experiment will take place in the region near Darwin during the Australian monsoon season (January-February). A crucial product from this experiment will be a unique data set of cloud properties and atmospheric state to provide the forcing and testing required by cloud resolving models and parameterizations in global climate models.
New Thumbnail Browser for Data Archive Gives Users More Options
Views produced by the Thumbnail Browser may be saved for future reference or emailed as a link to other users to show them the same view and make additional specifications for their data requests. A larger version of this image shows thumbnail data plots for a period of 7 days from four instruments located at the ACRF Southern Great Plains site.
Because the ARM data collection is very large, communicating specific information about its content to potential users is challenging. In early November, a new view called "Thumbnail Browser" joined the existing suite of user tools for finding and selecting data on the ARM Data Archive website. This new interface provides users with a graphical view of the data files before they decide to request them or download them for additional use. The new view offers the following advantages: the images are small enough to be stored online and dynamically displayed for each user; the time needed to display dozens of images within the user interface is reasonable; and the data plots show features in the data that are easily recognized graphically, but very difficult to represent in other forms. This graphical view of measurement contents will enable a broader user community to evaluate the potential usefulness of data from the Archive for their research.
The Thumbnail Browser starts by providing the user with various forms to specify general criteria for "data of interest." Users are then shown thumbnail views of graphs containing many of the primary measurements from ARM data streams. The thumbnail view includes many options for customizing the display within two thematic views: "date range" and "day at a time." Both views allow users to quickly see consecutive time ranges or days in a sequence. From the thumbnail view, users can directly access larger-scale data plots called "quick looks," review Data Quality Reports, or select data files to requested for retrieval and download. Graphical check boxes allow the selection of data files one by one, by day, by multiple days, or by data stream.
With about 340 data streams and over 420,000 data plots, the thumbnail and data plot collection accessed by this interface is the first known instance of a collection of data plots linked to a data request process for a data collection as large as the ARM Data Archive. At this time, the data plot collection includes primarily simple plot types (single and multiple line plots, and few profile plots), as well as data files generated after April 2001 from ARM-collected measurements. Additional data plots will be added during the next several months, including more complex plot types, external data streams, more Value Added Products, and earlier time periods. Access to the Thumbnail Browser is available by logging onto the ARM Archive User Interface.
