Atmospheric Radiation Measurement User Facility Radar Facility Operations

The Atmospheric Radiation Measurement user facility (ARM) has a large complement (over 20 systems) of vertically-pointing and scanning radars deployed at its three fixed sites (Oklahoma, Alaska, Azores) and three ARM Mobile Facilities (AMFs). These include C- and X-band precipitation radars, Ka-, W-, and X-band cloud radars, and vertically-pointing Ka- and W-band radars. The goals for these radars are to contribute to atmospheric and climate research by informing on cloud/precipitation processes through radar-based cloud properties and retrievals. While the ARM radar fleet has greatly expanded since 2010, the staffing to maintain, operate, and produce high-quality datasets has not increased at a corresponding level. This disconnect has necessitated that ARM prioritize and plan radar operations around higher-impact effort allocations and science priorities, which had generally emphasized data collections at ARM AMFs. This led to the deprioritization of radar operations at the fixed sites, including extended gaps in operational uptime for recent years.

As part of a new paradigm to enable more consistent radar operations and expectations at the ARM sites, a “roadmap to operations” was developed with input by the DOE ASR/ARM scientific community to maximize operations for scientific purposes. As part of this roadmap, scientific priorities for each site were developed in discussions with the science users and, from that, timelines for operations were developed. Additional information gathered as part of this roadmap included: i) the associated data product needs, ii) the level of effort required to bring the non-operational radars back to operations, and iii) the level of effort to maintain radar operations. Information from this roadmap was used in the development of the fiscal year (FY) 23 “ARM Radar Plan”. These plans had milestones assessed mid-year, with adjustments being made to ensure that ARM is still meeting the deliverables on high-priority tasks.

As ARM continues to operate its radar facility on a more regular basis, it is also looking at new and different ways of operating. This includes partnering with vendors, universities, and other groups for install and service contracts, full deployments of their own radar assets, or even data product development. As more radar data becomes available, we would like to continue to engage with communities to expand the use of the data and look for more opportunities to better enable operations.