Newswise — It is four-thirty on a Sunday morning when my cellphone chirps, rousing me from my deep sleep. As I transition from a horizontal to vertical state, and amidst the muddled fog of dream fragments, I am struck with a thought. One that will float through my mind many times throughout the next three days:

I’m going on my first business trip‐they’re sending me to the plains of Oklahoma, to a research facility nestled between cow pastures and oils rigs.

For the short time I had been working for ARM, I’ve seen pictures from ARM research sites and campaigns across the world. I’ve seen pictures of a mobile facility being installed in the dense rain forests of Manaus, Brazil. Pictures of scientists posing together next to newly installed instruments on the volcanic islands of the Azores. I’ve seen images of polar bears curiously traipsing through the North Slope of Alaska’s facilities. Up until this moment, I’ve been hidden away in the basement of my building on the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory campus.

But I’ve been let loose. And this was my experience.

Scattered around the main SGP site are these mini stations of meteorological instruments, like the Medford extended facility.

The Southern Great Plains (SGP) site is nestled in-between farms about an hour-and-a-half northeast of Oklahoma City, only accessible through a series of dirt and gravel roads. The SGP facility is the largest and most extensive climate research field site in the world, covering more than 55,000 square miles in a grid, occupying northern Oklahoma and southern Kansas. In this area, lies an extensive array of instrumentation, ranging from the first-of-its-kind Raman lidar to the aerosol observing system, measuring all aspects of climate, aerosol, and clouds.

My first impression was the site was surprisingly picturesque. The sunset over the small rolling plains sent cascading amber and gold sunbeams over sun-bleached shipping containers. Silver and white radiometers and radars sat in the field, surrounded by windswept fields. In the distance, a huge instrument tower pierced the twilight sky.

The majority of the instruments are housed inside of white industrial shipping containers. Some instruments are out in the open field, scanning the sky and taking measurements. These instruments feed information back to computers, recording and quantifying raw data.

From the top of the optical trailer, I was able to capture this picturesque view of the entrance.

I traveled with Rolanda Jundt, ARM communications, and Nick Bauer, Vivid Learning Systems, to create the first ARM 3-dimensional (3D) virtual tour. Over the span of two days, the team canvassed the site, taking more than 300 photos.

The process for creating a virtual tour is surprisingly simple. A photographer, in our case Nick, takes a series of three photos at 180° intervals with a fisheye lens on a DSLR camera, using a specialized program to stitch the photos together in order to create the 3D effect.

For me, the most exciting part was seeing and experiencing first-hand where the research and data are created. I walked among the infrared cameras and radiometers and met the people who worked out at the facility. It was fascinating just to be there, in the plains of Oklahoma, standing in the biggest facility of its kind, creating a tour of a government-sponsored research facility.

Check out the virtual tour here to see the result of our hard work!

Kyle WestcottARM Communications SpecialistPacific Northwest National Laboratory