Far exceeding the established milestone of 800 users in fiscal year 2004, at the end of June the ARM Climate Research Facility reported a cumulative total of 940 users for the year so far. The U.S. Department of Energy requires its national user facilities to report facility use by total visitor days—broken down by institution type, gender, race, citizenship, visitor role, visit purpose, and facility—for actual visitors and for active user research computer accounts. For research computer accounts (or “virtual visitors”), an individual is counted only once per account, even though they may open and close an account several times to obtain data from one or more sites. However, users are counted each time they physically visit a site, because many visitors participate in multiple, unrelated experiments or events.

While the third quarter typically generates higher user activity due to actions resulting from the annual ARM Science Team Meeting each spring and the start of graduate student research projects, general user activity has steadily increased throughout the year. Similarly, the volume of data storage and distribution continues to climb. For more detailed statistics on users and data availability, see the ARM Climate Research Facility Operations Quarterly Report.