News Brief
June 20, 2017 
LAMONT, Okla. - Far above the cattle pastures and wheat fields of north-central Oklahoma, weather systems born of different regions - Canada, the Rocky Mountains and the Gulf of Mexico - clash mightily. It's the perfect place to set up sophisticated atmospheric instruments and make their data accessible to scientists around the world eager to learn more about our planet.
That's just what happened southeast of Lamont, Okla., in 1992, when the Southern Great Plains observatory was established by the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Program.
Now, 25 years later, the plan has evolved into the ARM Climate Research Facility, a D.O.E. national scientific user facility, which has provided scientists with in excess of a petabyte of data about critical atmospheric processes - observations that enhance scientists' ability to understand the climate.
"We changed the way people do atmospheric science. We set a brand new standard," said Gerry Stokes, now a visiting professor at Stony Brook University in New York, who is widely regarded as the project's visionary.
Learn more about the 1st 25 years of the SGP facility, the biggest climate observatory on the planet, and why some consider the date the 1st data was produced by SGP - May 16, 1992 - as the 46th day of April.
ARM is operated by 9 D.O.E. laboratories, including the D.O.E.'s Pacific Northwest National Lab.
Tags: Environment, Fundamental Science, Climate Science, Atmospheric Science, Aerosols, Meteorology
Interdisciplinary teams at Pacific Northwest National Lab address many of America's most pressing issues in energy, the environment and national security through advances in basic and applied science. Founded in 1965, PNNL employs 4,400 staff and has an yearly budget of nearly $1 billion. It is managed by Battelle for the D.O.E.'s Office of Science. As the single biggest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, the Office of Science is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information on PNNL, visit the PNNL News Center, or follow PNNL on Facebook, Google+, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter.
