Brookhaven National Laboratory meteorologist guides development of ARM science data products
To make its data more accessible to the scientific community, the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) user facility relies on science translators. These individuals lead the development of value-added products (VAPs) from ARM instrument data. Science translators also serve as liaisons between ARM users and infrastructure staff.
In October 2021, Scott Giangrande, a meteorologist at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York, took over as ARM’s lead translator.
Giangrande replaced Shaocheng Xie, a research scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. Xie was ARM’s lead translator for three years.
The lead translator provides scientific leadership in coordinating VAP development projects across ARM’s measurement focus areas (e.g., clouds, aerosols, precipitation). This person coordinates and leads regular meetings with the translator team, activities related to ARM’s translator vision plan for future science product development, and annual planning for translator priorities.
The lead translator also serves on the ARM-Atmospheric System Research (ASR) Coordination Team (AACT), representing the translator team in planning for the annual Joint ARM User Facility/ASR Principal Investigators Meeting.
About Xie
As the lead translator, Xie helped carry out ARM’s most recent translator vision plan. This document incorporated key feedback to align with ARM’s mission priorities.
Xie says that his top accomplishment as lead translator was the development of the “one-page description” for ARM’s core VAPs. The one-page descriptions, found on VAP web pages, aim to effectively convey VAP information, including data quality and limitations, to the user community. (See an example of this description on the ARM Best Estimate [ARMBE] data products page.)
Xie remains an ARM science translator, a role he has held since 2008. He oversees work on science products that help make ARM data more usable for modelers. Such products include ARMBE data products, which contain observed quantities for model evaluation, and large-scale forcing data based on constrained variational analysis (VARANAL). Scientists can use VARANAL data to drive and validate model simulations.
Xie is the project leader for developing the ARM Data-Oriented Metrics and Diagnostics Package (ARM-DIAGS) and ARM radar and lidar simulators. These tools are designed to further enable the use of ground-based ARM measurements in model evaluation.
As a translator, Xie also works with the ASR Warm Boundary Layer Processes Working Group to address its science product needs.
A cloud and earth system modeler, Xie is heavily involved in the development of the U.S. Department of Energy’s high-resolution Energy Exascale Earth System Model (E3SM). He co-led the development of E3SM’s first-generation atmospheric model. In 2021, the E3SM team finished integrating ARM-DIAGS into E3SM’s diagnostics package. Now Xie leads the development of atmospheric physics for the next generation of E3SM.
About Giangrande
Giangrande joined ARM’s translator team in 2016. He has been the point of contact for science products related to warm clouds, including the Active Remote Sensing of CLouds (ARSCL) suite and Laser and Video Disdrometer Quantities (LDQUANTS and VDISQUANTS).
Also, Giangrande has been responsible for science products from the Cold-Air Outbreaks in the Marine Boundary Layer Experiment (COMBLE), a 2019–2020 ARM field campaign in Norway.
In addition to his translator work, Giangrande frequently uses ARM data in his research on cloud processes. He has been a co-investigator for major ARM field campaigns in the Azores, Brazil, and Oklahoma. Currently, he is a co-investigator for ARM’s TRacking Aerosol Convection interactions ExpeRiment (TRACER), taking place through September 2022 in the Houston, Texas, area.
Related information:
Find ARM translators and their value-added products (VAPs) in the Translators List.
Since 2019, Giangrande has been a member of the ARM User Executive Committee (UEC), which serves as the official voice of the ARM user community in interactions with facility management. On the UEC, Giangrande represents the science areas of cloud measurements, precipitation processes, and cloud-aerosol-precipitation interactions.
Giangrande is active in another ARM constituent group, the Cloud and Precipitation Measurements and Science Group. This group of ARM staff and users looks at ways to improve the performance and science impact of ARM’s cloud and precipitation measurements.
In addition, Giangrande is on the site science team for the upcoming deployment of the third ARM Mobile Facility (AMF3) in the Southeastern United States. The site science team is developing the science plan and initial research project for the new deployment, which is scheduled to start in 2023. Giangrande serves as the team’s topical area lead for convective clouds.
In his new lead translator role, Giangrande says that he wants to build on Xie’s success in strengthening ARM’s outreach to the internal and external modeling communities.
The translator team is also working on a new vision plan ahead of the next ARM/ASR joint meeting, tentatively in fall 2022. In the plan, the translator team will respond to stakeholder feedback and recommendations from ARM’s 2020 Triennial Review and show how it will support the science goals in ARM’s Decadal Vision document.
ARM welcomes Giangrande into his new role and thanks Xie for his years of service as the lead translator.
# # #ARM is a DOE Office of Science user facility operated by nine DOE national laboratories.