Every three years, DOE Office of Science user facilities undergo a review to evaluate their effectiveness in contributing to their respective science areas. The latest ARM Facility review was conducted in mid-February by a six-member review panel led by Minghua Zhang of Stony Brook University. Notably, in a debriefing following the review, the panel stated that ARM was a “world class facility without peer.”

The panel convened in Ponca City, Oklahoma, near ARM’s Southern Great Plains site to conduct their review. Their first agenda item was an SGP site tour, which provided a realtime example of the scope and expertise of site operations and included a demonstration of the site’s newly installed precipitation radars. The remainder of the review consisted of technical presentations by Facility management. All the panel’s conclusions and recommendations, which will be used to advise the Office of Science on the mission, operations, and future plans for the user facility, are contained in the recently published review report.