Justin Monroe, CIMMS Research Associate, ARM Climate Research Facility Data Quality Office

Background:
M.S., Meteorology, University of Oklahoma, 2007
B.S., Meteorology, University of Oklahoma, 2004
B.B.A., Management Information Systems, University of Oklahoma, 2000

Experience:
Justin initially obtained a degree in MIS with a focus on software development, but he was always fascinated with severe weather and forecasting while growing up in Oklahoma. This eventually led him into the field of meteorology at the University of Oklahoma where he worked as both an undergraduate and graduate research assistant with the Oklahoma Climatological Survey performing work primarily focused on surface energy flux and irradiance measurements from the Oklahoma Mesonet and output from land-surface models. During his time there under the guidance of Dr. Jeffrey Basara and Dr. Kenneth Crawford, he learned about instrumentation, the importance of data quality, and the role of land-atmosphere interactions in weather and climate. He then worked briefly with Argonne National Laboratory comparing measurements from the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Program (ARM) Southern Great Plains Site and Oklahoma Mesonet stations before transitioning into CIMMS and the ARM Data Quality (DQ) Office in 2008. The ARM DQ Office has since been a great fit for his meteorology and software background.

What He Does:
Justin works in the ARM DQ Office, primarily focusing on data quality analysis of ARM Value-Added Products (VAPs) and the development of data visualization and analysis tools using Python. ARM VAPs are operational data products created to apply advanced data quality procedures to instrument data or implement well-vetted algorithms to perform retrievals of atmospheric quantities that can’t be measured directly. A single ARM VAP often has multiple instrument and/or VAP dependencies as inputs, and Justin is constantly developing new tools and collaborating with others in the ARM program to simplify tracking of data provenance and the identification of data quality issues throughout the VAP development process.

Trivia:
Although he grew up in land-locked Oklahoma, Justin frequently visited his mother’s family in southern California. He learned to love the ocean at a young age, and he is known to spend his time bodyboarding and bodysurfing for hours at a time when he visits the beach.