Webinars and Tutorials

After the virtual 2020 Joint ARM User Facility/Atmospheric System Research (ASR) Principal Investigators Meeting, ARM started to conduct a series of webinars on topics of interest to the user community.

ARM sent out a survey to the community after the 2020 joint meeting to gauge which topics were of interest.

Notable topics included:

• field campaign processes
• introduction to the Large-Eddy Simulation (LES) ARM Symbiotic Simulation and Observation (LASSO) activity
• ARM computer clusters and development tools
• ARM Data Discovery
• open-source software repositories
• the ARM Diagnostics package and Energy Exascale Earth System Model (E3SM) single-column model.

This page includes documents and videos from completed webinars and tutorials, in addition to related materials.

The Bankhead National Forest (BNF) atmospheric observatory is a long-term ARM mobile observatory in northwestern Alabama. The BNF is currently expected to be operational for five years, starting in October 2024.

Scientists will use data from the BNF to learn about clouds, aerosols, and land-atmosphere interactions, which in turn will lead to improvements in models of the Earth’s climate.

This webinar included an overview of the BNF and the different instruments included at each of the observatory’s sites. Also discussed during the webinar was the ARM field campaign proposal process.

Read more about the BNF.

ARM’s tethered balloon systems (TBS), which consist of a helium-filled balloon, tether, winch, and sensors, provide a safe way to gather data related to wind, turbulence, thermodynamic state, and aerosols through the atmospheric boundary layer.

This webinar included an overview of TBS baseline instrumentation and datastreams, a discussion on current ARM TBS proposal calls and operating locations, a demonstration of how to access TBS datastreams through ARM’s Data Discovery browser, and user science examples using TBS data from ARM and the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL).

Read more about ARM’s TBS.

ARM Mobile Facilities are designed to operate in any environment to collect atmospheric and climate data in under-sampled regions of the world. In late 2023, ARM opened a call soliciting preliminary proposals for field campaigns that require the deployment of the first or second ARM Mobile Facility.

In this webinar, ARM staff provided an overview of ARM Mobile Facility capabilities, the mobile facility proposal process, and roles and responsibilities associated with mobile facility deployments. Staff also answered questions from potential principal investigators and co-investigators.

Learn more about the ARM Mobile Facilities.

ARM offers high performance computing (HPC) resources for users to conduct big-data analytics and machine learning for atmospheric and climate science research. The ARM Data Center provides a co-located data and computing platform that enables users to work with large volumes of ARM data without the need to download them.

This webinar provided information for people interested in using ARM’s HPC resources, showing them how to request access, get started on the platform, and schedule and run parallel jobs. ARM Data Center staff also gave examples of parallel computation using Python and Dask.

Read more about ARM’s HPC resources.

In the spring and summer of 2023, ARM’s ArcticShark uncrewed aerial system completed a series of flights at the Southern Great Plains atmospheric observatory, collecting data for the user community.

This webinar provided information for people interested in using ArcticShark data in their research. Participants received an overview of ArcticShark operations and technology, gained insight into its available instrument payload and measurement capabilities, learned how to access ArcticShark data and integrate them into their research, and viewed science examples presented by ARM users.

Read more about the webinar.

JupyterHub is a popular tool for supporting scientific analysis through notebook-based computational environments and is the latest addition to ARM’s available computing resources.

In this webinar, ARM Data Center staff provided a crash course in using interactive Jupyter Notebooks, navigating the JupyterHub environment, and learning recommended workflows to seamlessly move from data discovery to data analysis. Participants also learned how to sign up to use JupyterHub as part of the ARM Data Workbench. Currently in development, the workbench will offer a free suite of tools for ARM users to find, access, and analyze data.

Read more about the webinar.

There is a growing effort in ARM, Atmospheric System Research (ASR), and other communities to make scientific research, data, and software more open and accessible to the larger atmospheric science community. The ARM/ASR Open Science Virtual Workshop 2022 served as a mechanism to bring this larger community together to discuss and collaborate on open science topics, which included but were not limited to software, hardware, and data.

The aim of this workshop was to expose attendees to the spectrum of open science occurring in the ARM and ASR communities while breaking down information silos. Presentations and tutorials were solicited from the ARM/ASR and broader scientific communities on all aspects of open science related to the missions of ARM and ASR.

Read more about the workshop.

As part of its Triennial Review in November 2020, ARM was asked to provide a strategy for the effective operation of its scanning and vertically pointing radars. (For information about the future of the scanning ARM cloud radars, read this article from Engineering and Process Manager Jennifer Comstock.)

In response to this Triennial Review feedback, ARM held a series of four radar listening sessions in March and April 2022. Hosted by ARM Instrument Operations Manager Adam Theisen, each session featured a different topic related to ARM’s radar instrument suite. The sessions also allowed the ARM community to give feedback on ARM’s radar operations.

Learn more about the sessions.

Sessions on Fixed-Observatory Radars

To explore research questions beyond those addressed by ARM’s fixed atmospheric observatories in Alaska, Oklahoma, and the Azores, scientists can propose a field campaign to use an ARM Mobile Facility to collect atmospheric and climate data from under-sampled regions around the world.

In this webinar, ARM staff provided an overview of the capabilities of the ARM Mobile Facility, the mobile facility proposal process, and roles and responsibilities associated with mobile facility deployments. Presenters were ARM Technical Director Jim Mather, Associate Director for Operations Nicki Hickmon, and ARM Mobile Facility Site Manager Heath Powers.

Read more about the webinar.

ARM has a new mechanism for science community members to request measurements, data products, or data services that would help advance their science areas.

ARM Technical Director Jim Mather introduced the mechanism during a community input webinar. In ARM’s new web form, people can provide input outside of activities such as science meetings, focused workshops, and the field campaign proposal process.

In addition to requesting new capabilities, people can use the form to identify opportunities to expand on existing capabilities.

Learn more about the new mechanism.

The LASSO activity generated LES ensembles for five years’ worth of shallow convection cases (2015–2019) at ARM’s Southern Great Plains (SGP) atmospheric observatory. These simulations, combined with a suite of relevant observations, skill scores, and diagnostics, are packaged into “data bundles” that can be used for many purposes, such as providing data for cloud studies or for providing prepackaged data sets to simplify student interaction with atmospheric observations and model data.

During the LASSO tutorial, participants learned more about the SGP shallow convection scenario, how they may access the data for their research or classwork, and how they could use the LASSO evaluation software on their own model output. Part 1 of the tutorial focused on the LES methodology used in LASSO and how to obtain LASSO data, Part 2 focused on the observation suite included in the LASSO bundles, and Part 3 focused on the LASSO workflow.

Read more about the tutorial.

LASSO Tutorial Videos

LASSO Tutorial Documents

• LASSO Tutorial Read-Me: The Master List of Links
• LASSO Tutorial Prologue and Part 1: Library of Large-Eddy Simulation for Shallow Convection and the Ensemble Approach
• LASSO Tutorial Part 2: Observations and Data Bundle Selection
• LASSO Tutorial Part 3: LASSO-O (Operationalization) Workflow Software
• LASSO Tutorial Epilogue

ARM Data Discovery is where you can access and order data from ARM’s nearly 30-year-old archive.

During the ARM Data Discovery Webinar, led by ARM Data Center staff, participants learned how to effectively use new Data Discovery features, including the guided search, location search, and advanced keyword search, to find data.

Users also learned how to review additional details about the data, see their past orders, and generate citations.

Read more about the webinar.

Data Discovery Overview Videos