May 16, 2016

Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Climate Research Facility

The Department of Energy’s Office of Science (Science) supports the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Climate Research Facility.  The ARM Facility was established in 1989 to provide strategically located observatories for studying the Earth’s climate.  It supports the Department’s climate mission by providing comprehensive sets of observations in diverse climatic regimes and the associated data infrastructure to support the research community.  Nine national laboratories manage aspects of the ARM Facility, which had a budget of about $67 million for fiscal year 2015.  

During our audit, nothing material came to our attention to indicate that Science’s management of the ARM Facility was not generally effective.  However, we determined that the ARM Facility did not always obtain climate data sets from external users of its sites for inclusion in the Archive.  Moreover, final technical reports of the external projects were not always obtained and, when reports were acquired, they were not always shared with other researchers and the public through the Department’s repository at the Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI).  We concluded that the ARM Facility’s policy and procedures did not go far enough to secure data and final reports from external users.  Furthermore, although the ARM Facility had procedures to send final reports to OSTI, personnel did not always follow the procedure. 

We also found that the ARM Facility had not fully addressed external recommendations to establish an off site backup of the Archive.  Our review of documents and discussions with ARM Facility management determined that their focus was the short-term concern of creating an off-site backup, rather than the future needs of the program.  They did not fully consider the alternatives to creating and mailing tape backups, such as automating the backups through interconnected databases.  

Failure to obtain data and final technical reports from the external users could hinder the achievement of the ARM Facility mission to improve climate and earth system research modeling by providing timely data to the climate research community.  Furthermore, the lack of a complete off-site backup of the Archive could lead to the loss of critical and irreplaceable climate observations should a catastrophic event happen at ORNL.  

Topic: Management & Administration