The Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) user facility’s translator group, which plays a crucial behind-the-scenes role in making ARM data more useful to the scientific community, has just released a comprehensive new plan that sets out its strategy and goals for the next three years.
Translators’ main function is creating and improving value-added products (VAPs) that process quality-controlled ARM measurements into more usable forms for science purposes such as process studies and model evaluation.
Translators are also invaluable conduits between science users and ARM infrastructure staff, keeping their ears to the ground about scientific priorities and ensuring that ARM users know about the facility’s full range of data products and services.
Current members of the translator group are:
- Scott Giangrande (lead translator), Brookhaven National Laboratory
- Jennifer Comstock (ARM associate director for research), Krista Gaustad (software development), John Shilling (aerosol translator), and Damao Zhang (clouds and precipitation translator), Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
- Scott Collis (clouds and precipitation translator), Argonne National Laboratory
- Ken Kehoe (ARM Data Quality Office), University of Oklahoma
- Shaocheng Xie (cloud-climate modeling translator), Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.