The Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) user facility, a DOE Office of Science user facility, is ‘the world’s premiere ground-based observations facility advancing atmospheric and climate research.’ As one of the nine DOE laboratories that manage and operate ARM, ORNL is responsible for the management and operation of ARM data services, a collaborative effort across several ORNL divisions.

Staff in the Environmental Sciences Division help to manage the end-to-end data cycle, while Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF) staff manage and operate the computing clusters, Stratus and Cumulus, that are used for large scale data analysis and model data development. ORNL staff also work with external climate scientists to ensure that the data collected from over 450 instruments is appropriately organized, archived, and distributed, allowing scientists from around the world to access this data – now over 3 petabytes and computing clusters – for critical climate research and data analysis.

Cumulus System Specifications

  • CPU: 2x Milan 7713 processors (64 cores / processor)
  • Memory/node: 256GB DDR4 (512GB DDR4 for the higher memory nodes)
  • Nodes: 128
  • Interconnect: Non-blocking Fat Tree, Mellanox HDR InfiniBand switches