Since its inception in 1992, the Southern Great Plains (SGP) site has been the largest and most extensive climate research site for the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Climate Research Facility. Located in rural Oklahoma, the SGP site functions as a field measurement site and user facility, gathering data to improve circulation models used in climate research.

The SGP site consists of in situ and remote-sensing instrument clusters arrayed across approximately 55,000 square miles in north-central Oklahoma. The large majority of facility visitors and users are not native Oklahomans and do not have easy access or availability to visit prior to use.

To display site capabilities, ARM communications and Vivid Learning Systems personnel traveled to the SGP site in May to collect images needed to develop a 3-dimensional (3D) virtual tour, which will aid in creating an easily accessible alternative format for visiting the site. Although ARM has amassed a large photo library of the SGP and all of its user facilities, which can help potential users see the layout of the site, a 3D virtual tour allows one to organically explore the entire site in a first person view, using curiosity as their guide.

To create a virtual tour, the photographer used a Digital Single Lens Reflex, more commonly known as a DSLR, camera equipped with a wide angle fisheye lens capable of viewing 180° of the landscape in a single shot to collect images of the SGP. Using a tripod, the photographer takes a series of three photos at each lock point and a computer program stitches them together to create a 360° portrait, known as a virtual room (VR). Each VR features key instruments or facility to illustrate the layout of the SGP site and shows the site’s varied capabilities. Each instrument and facility is highlighted with a button, which leads to a pop-up featuring more information.

The SGP tour is the first in a series of virtual tours for the ARM Facility and will be followed by tours featuring the North Slope of Alaska and Eastern North Atlantic. A team will photograph these sites in the spring and summer of 2015, making them all available in late 2015 at http://www.arm.gov/tour/.

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The ARM Climate Research Facility is a national scientific user facility funded through the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science. The ARM Facility is operated by nine Department of Energy national laboratories.