The ARM User Executive Committee (UEC) is eager to engage with you. This is a message from UEC Chair Jennifer “Jen” Delamere.
UEC Workshop Offers Chance to Explore ARM’s Roots and Build New Connections
As my plane landed in Oklahoma City, I was finishing the last chapter of a newly published book, Larry McMurtry: A Life. While McMurtry was from Texas, not Oklahoma, I wanted to know more about an author who wrote hundreds of pages on the American Southwest. Why? I was about to visit the ARM Southern Great Plains (SGP) atmospheric observatory for the first time, and I wanted more context for all the McMurtry books I read over the years—books in which the Great Plains played a prominent role.
The SGP itself is at the confluence of oil pump jacks, wind turbines, cow pasture, and rural American communities. For someone who has lived most of her life in northern latitudes, this trip to Oklahoma was something wholly new!
For the next two days (October 24–25), I would be lucky enough to share this SGP experience with the UEC as we gathered to review our mission and plan the remainder of our 2023–2024 activities. Moreover, we would meet the incredible SGP team that keeps the observatory running 24/7. For this meeting, a shoutout to SGP Operations Manager John Schatz and SGP Site Administrative Assistant Doris McAbee for providing such a welcoming environment with lots of Oklahoma hospitality! What a service this team does for climate researchers around the world. Thank you!
The UEC meeting at the SGP was only the second in-person meeting dedicated to UEC activities since the UEC was established in 2014. Our meeting objectives were to have a deep dive into ARM for UEC members who don’t have a long history with ARM and the Atmospheric System Research (ASR) program, and, for those of us who have been around a long while, to look anew at all that has changed within the user facility. ARM Director Jim Mather and DOE ARM Program Manager Sally McFarlane each presented historical overviews of the observatories, ARM, and ASR. This history is worthy of being shared with you, the community.
Our UEC subgroups, which you will read about in upcoming blogs, were also a focus of the meeting. From these discussions, we affirmed the importance of having a voice for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) activities at the annual Joint ARM User Facility/ASR Principal Investigators Meeting, as we had in 2022 and 2023. In joint discussions with ARM communications staff, we planned in-person outreach at the annual meetings of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) and American Meteorological Society (AMS) to promote DOE’s Science Undergraduate Laboratory Internships (SULI) program and other undergraduate opportunities. Recognizing the power of meeting in the same room, we discussed bringing together members of the ARM, ASR, and Energy Exascale Earth System Model (E3SM) communities in a small workshop. In addition, we recognized that ARM could empower data users with the tools to integrate satellite data into their workflows.
We saved the most significant conversation for last. The last few hours of our workshop were spent reflecting on how ARM can provide a more personal introduction of the user facility to new data users and principal investigators beyond just using ARM.gov. We questioned ourselves about the UEC’s role in obtaining feedback about ARM. What is the difference between the Ask Us and Ask a UEC Member links on the ARM website? We on the UEC know the answer—we can talk with you beyond providing info on a data format or the data archive. We can provide one-on-one dialogue on the user facility and the relationship between ARM and ASR, and, importantly, we can convey feedback to ARM management, which can effect change. With that notion, the UEC will work with ARM to implement more targeted ways to introduce the facility to new data users and principal investigators.
The UEC in-person workshop was a fantastic opportunity to see a research facility in action! As I drove away from the SGP, with a severe storm shelter and cows in my rearview mirror, I realized how lucky I was to have had those few days in Oklahoma. As McMurtry once reminded us, “The hardest thing on Earth is choosing what matters.” For me, it is personal connections that matter. As the UEC, we are the personal connectors among the many groups that make up the ARM community, and that was nowhere more evident than when we connected at the SGP just a few short weeks ago.
