Field campaigns: an SGP specialty

 
Poster PDF

Authors

John R Schatz — Southern Great Plains
David Kent Breedlove — Southern Great Plains
David Swank — Southern Great Plains
Brooke D. Martin — ARM Climate Research Facility
Douglas L Sisterson — Argonne National Laboratory

Category

Field Campaigns

Description

Since its inception in 1992, the ARM Climate Research Facility’s Southern Great Plains (SGP) site has provided valuable data via an array of complex, continuously operating surface-based instruments, which are carefully attended to by Site Operations staff on a day-by-day basis. This is especially important during field campaigns. But this is only one aspect of the SGP Operations mission; the other is being directly involved in the support of field campaigns. Since 1992, the SGP has hosted more than 200 campaigns. Once SGP is notified of an approved campaign, SGP Operations works with the principal investigator (PI) to gather information to prepare for the upcoming campaign. Every department at the SGP is involved: safety, shipping and receiving, computer systems, facilities engineering, instrument maintenance, and administration support. A key tool used to gather all the information necessary from the PI is the Instrument Support Request (ISR). PIs are asked to submit this form, which provides a checklist of all aspects of logistical and safety requirements for each guest instrument and computers to be brought on site. It also identifies the required SGP support effort as well as expendables and other contracting needs. The ISR promotes a continuous dialog with the PI and field campaign participants in the early stages of planning that sets expectations so that investigators will find everything they need in place on the day they arrive. This front-end activity is critical to the success of all field campaigns. Presented are the 2012 field campaigns being conducted at the SGP, which are a good representation of the diversity of atmospheric research conducted at the SGP.