ARM is a big and complicated project. There are many different people from many different areas of research all working together. Because the program crosses over so many sub disciplines of Science, there tend to be many ways to describe the same thing. Also, the program started with the Southern Great Plains (SGP) site and added new instruments and locations as the program progressed. Before the start of the ARM Data Quality Office each site was started and run independently of each other. This has resulted in some idiosyncrasies between sites. There are no official ways of describing the process, but hopefully this will help.
|
Cryptic Title |
Definition |
Example |
|
Site |
The regional describer of the location. |
SGP, NSA, ENA, AMF |
|
Problem Resolution Forms |
The online web forums used to notify others and track problems with data. |
DQA, DQPR, DQR |
|
Level |
The amount of processing of additional information added to the data file to improve or add important information. |
.00, .a1, .b1 |
|
Instrument Code |
The sub-category of a class that corresponds to a specific instrument. |
30EBBR, IRT200ms |
|
Instrument Class |
The category of instrument(s) that make up the measurements that go into a data file. |
MPL, AERI |
|
Facility |
The instrument's location name. |
E13, C1, S02 |
|
Extended Facility |
Ancillary facilities surrounding the central facility at the Southern Great Plains site. |
E9, E13, E34 |
|
Datastream |
The end product (ie data file) that is collected and used by an end data user. The name is a combination of site, class, facility, and level. |
sgpmetE13.b1, nsairtC1.b1 |
|
Data File |
The single file, typically 1 day in length, containing the data. |
sgpmetE13.b1.20220502.000000.nc |
|
Central Facility |
The primary or most instrumented location at a site. |
C1, C2, C3 |
ARM is also very difficult to understand because everyone talks with Acronyms. It also helps to share the same definition when describing a scientific process. ARM has provided a Glossary of common terms.