A 35-Year Journey Supporting Geoscience Research Field Projects Worldwide: Perceptions, Lessons Learned, and the Remarkable Future

The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Earth Observing Laboratory (EOL) has been providing support to science teams conducting field projects involving NSF-sponsored state-of-the-art measurement facilities including aircraft, ground-based facilities, profiling systems and other specialized instrumentation worldwide. In addition, EOL has assisted with project planning and operations coordination in the field deployment activities as well as designing and implementing comprehensive data management strategies to preserve the data legacy of these projects.

Thirty-five years of supporting research field projects at NCAR form the basis of a remarkable history that will be highlighted. The inventory of projects consists of national and international campaigns in diverse disciplines including Arctic biology, ice physics, mesoscale meteorology, tropical cyclones, air chemistry and boundary layer flux processes. A varied collection of airborne and ground-based observing facilities was utilized during the data collection phases. Orchestrating the conduct of projects involved everything from assisting the science teams with the project management and logistics to international agreements; developing and implementing the operations and data management plans; coordinating flight operations; preparing weather forecasts; and planning and participating in pre- as well as post-field season planning, data and analysis meetings.

An important concept to be discussed is the cradle to grave field project life-time including the planning phase, facility deployment and operations phase and the analysis phase. The framework around a 45-day field deployment could include a 2-5 year planning phase within which the science team is assembled and science goals are specified and refined, observing systems are identified and requested and the science proposals are written, reviewed and hopefully funded. The field deployment set-up, operational support of the field phase and tear-down phase may only take 6 months to a year and includes the key logistics support for the project and deployable facilities. The analysis phase of the project begins following the cessation of data collection and is made up of post-field data processing and quality control, data archival, project workshops and all the reports and publications that form the legacy of the project. These activities may continue 5-10 years after the field deployment or even longer is some cases.

Specific mention will be made about the development of a data management strategy for each project. This is a very important step, often overlooked or only considered late in the planning and implementation process. How one ensures that the data collected, organized and archived by the participants is a key part of the project legacy beyond the publications is emphasized.

Unforeseen events can occur during field projects and always makes for some interesting or even unnerving times. Incidents can range from being pursued by the weather you are planning to chase, to the potential of being prey for the local predators or even having an overthrow of government while deployed in a foreign land. The theory of what we plan for and the reality of what can actually happen will be described with a few examples.

A particular aspect of field research that deserves attention is the realization of how technology has changed the way we do business. The advent of everything from routine high- resolution global satellite imagery to the Internet have fundamentally changed the paradigm of conducting campaigns around the world. An overview and impact of the technical innovations will be overlaid on a chronology of field programs in which the author was involved. We have so much more information at our fingertips and is shareable across wide bandwidth communications that it is now possible to consider science objectives and project locations not possible even 10 years ago. An overview of how some of the projects utilized the technologies and comments on science team expectations (realistic and otherwise) will be provided.

The involvement in more than 70 of these projects over a 35-year career at NCAR has been an incredible journey. The experience of working with a remarkable diversity of scientists and science plans, field deployment challenges and global locations has given the author a unique perspective on the planning and conduct of field projects. There have been some quirky aspects of the field project history and people, lessons learned from 3 decades of support and some changes about how we support deployment that are worthy of comment. Some experienced based perspective on what the future might hold for the support of field-based observational science will be offered.