John Schatz, SGP Deputy Site Manager (in striped shirt), answers questions from Billings Rotary Club members as Mary Green, BBSS operator (walking from cart) finishes launching the balloon and heads to the control room to monitor the data transmission.Education and outreach play an important role in informing the public about ARM’s mission related to climate change research. In late September, staff at the ARM Southern Great Plains site hosted the Billings (Oklahoma) Rotary Club, followed by a group of 7th graders from the local Lutheran school. These types of visits are encouraged and welcomed, as they provide an opportunity to showcase the user facility’s capabilities and strengthen relationships within the communities that host the ARM sites.
SGP staff provided the Rotary members with a tour of many important parts of the site, including the Aerosol Observing System and the Radiometer Calibration Facility. They also watched a weather balloon launch — also knows as the balloon borne sounding system, or BBSS — then went into a control room where operator Mary Green explained a computer display showing data transmitted from the balloon’s radiosonde. The group then discussed the important role of the SGP site to ARM sites around the world, and how the instrumentation systems at the site contribute to ongoing climate research. They also viewed a short presentation on new systems being installed at the site, which include a network of precipitation radars and new measurement sites. The Rotary Club was invited back in the spring of 2011 to tour the site when a major experiment, the Midlatitude Continental Convective Cloud Campaign, or MC3E, will be going on.
Mary Green explains to 7th graders from First Lutheran School the procedures she follows to launch a weather balloon.In early October, the 7th grade class from First Lutheran School in nearby Ponca City, Oklahoma, visited the site for a few hours in what operations personnel have informally dubbed the “Launch at Lunch” program. Once again, Mary Green prepared the balloon’s radiosonde as the 31 students enjoyed their sack lunches, then went outside to watch the launch. Prior to lunch, site operations manager Dan Rusk hosted a tour of the site, with participation from visiting scientists Ray Bambha and Hope Michelsen of Sandia National Laboratory. They were onsite for their field campaign, the Northern Oklahoma Carbon Dioxide Attribution with Tracers Study.
