In late April I was given the opportunity to attend the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) Conference in San Antonio, Texas.  Before I left for the conference, I thought about what my expectations would be, as I had never attended a meeting like this.  I hoped that attending NSTA would be an unforgettable experience. I had never traveled to San Antonio, let alone Texas, and found this very exciting. I thought that I would have the opportunity to meet new people and have many new experiences. I was excited about attending the conference and being able to see all of the other booths and some of the presentations. I felt so very fortunate to be able to attend this conference, and looked forward to taking full advantage of what the conference offered once I got there.

And those expectations were absolutely met. Attending NSTA was a great opportunity and I will never forget it. It was really neat to be able to tour around the conference and see different types of science being utilized. Most importantly, presenting at the GLOBE booth was very neat. Performing the experiment about soil permeation was a big learning experience, and allowed me to meet and interact with people I otherwise would not have.

Savona and other students at the GLOBE Booth at NSTA

An experience at the conference I will never forget is meeting people from all across the country, and some from other countries. I was able to talk to people from Canada, United Kingdom, India, and the United States. This was unforgettable because, had I not attended the conference, I would not have been able to meet these individuals. Through a few of these people, I also learned about various scholarships and college programs, both of which are crucial to any high school student planning on attending a college or university.

By attending NSTA I learned that there is a very large group of people dedicated to science. This is crucial because science is the backbone for a lot of other fields of study, as well as being a part of everyday life. I also learned that there is nothing quite like meeting someone who is familiar with the same areas across the country as you are. This was a very neat conference, and presenting at the GLOBE booth was also a huge learning experience because it allowed me to broaden my horizons on the topic of soil.

I would tell other students who would like to attend a similar meeting or conference to absolutely jump at the chance to do so. This presentation was one of the most amazing experiences I have had, and would love to do it again. I would also tell students to not be nervous about presenting in front of a large number of people, because oftentimes it is in their head and there is nothing to worry about.

Suggested activity: Have you ever attended a meeting like this?  What was your experience?  We’d love to hear about it!  Leave us a comment, send us an email or leave a post on our Facebook page.  And be sure to attend the 2013 GLOBE Virtual Student Conference.  There are many great projects by students from all over the world on the GLOBE website. 

During our time in the Atmospheric Science doctoral program at Colorado State University (CSU), we would take breaks from frustrating programming efforts and run upstairs to the roof of the building to take pictures of clouds. We would identify them by name, describe the conditions in which they were forming, and head back inside to see if we could put them within the context of the radar and satellite imagery. As our collection continued to grow, we started to discuss the idea of creating a joint webpage or, at the very least, a shared online photo album to organize our cloud pictures from CSU and from our individual collections before those years. Unfortunately, this was also the time that we were both trying to finish up our dissertations, the final stage before the completion of a doctoral degree, and the cloud atlas simply remained a fun idea for the future. Eventually, Nick took a postdoctoral position at the National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, OK and Angela accepted a postdoctoral position at the University of Washington in Seattle.

As we both settled into our new jobs in new locations, we continued to add to our collection and decided that we were finally ready to start cataloging our pictures. By creating a Facebook page, not only could we easily organize and share our pictures, but it would also allow the opportunity for others to share their pictures with us. Thus the Community Cloud Atlas was born.

The goal of our page is to create an open environment for the public to share their pictures of the sky, identify clouds, and to discuss how they form and what they can tell us about the current and upcoming weather. We have created individual photo albums for each cloud type and are trying to fill them with pictures from all over the world.

 We are excited by the large variety of clouds that are represented so far, from the rare mammatus clouds to everyday fair-weather cumulus; we want to see them all! Not sure what the cloud is? No problem! Post it to our page and we’ll identify it for you. Do you just want to show off that beautiful sunset? Great! We would love to see it!

While we have no specific long-term plans for this page, we have already been asked by folks at NOVA to contribute pictures (with permission from the photographers) to their upcoming Cloud Lab project. It will be exciting to see how this project progresses and we look forward to an expanding community of cloud lovers!

Suggested activity: Take some photographs while you do your cloud observations, submit them to the Community Cloud Atlas on Facebook and be sure to submit your data to the GLOBE database.  Also be sure to share the photographs with The GLOBE Program – you can send them via email or post them to our Facebook Page.

It is May, and that means it is time for the 2013 GLOBE Virtual Student Conference. My fifth graders have been working very hard on their GLOBE projects this year. They are looking forward to sharing their work with other GLOBE students, and seeing what other schools have done to learn about and care for the earth.

The first virtual conference that my class participated in was in May of 2012. I did not know what to expect. After watching the project videos that were submitted by schools across the United States I discovered that the most valuable thing that was done during the school year that made the virtual conference an engaging experience was building relationships with other GLOBE students. My students investigated GLOBE data from other schools worldwide to find out what their climate was like. Several times during the year we used SKYPE to talk with students from Crenshaw School located on the Bolivar Peninsula in Texas about the progress of our inquiry projects. The third thing that helped my students make connections to others in the GLOBE Program was to participate in the Surface Temperature Field Campaign along with many schools all over the world.

Main Street School students talking to fifth graders at Crenshaw School in Bolivar Peninsula, TX via Skype about their work with GLOBE protocols. Photo courtesy M. Burns.

On the opening day of the virtual conference in 2012, anticipation was very high for my classes. We made it a festive occasion. The students invited guests, including the superintendent of our schools to participate. A big world map was placed on the wall so that the location of each school could be marked before we watched and commented on their project video. My students were eager to see and hear GLOBE friends again. The virtual conference was a highlight of the school year.

Main Street Students give the “thumbs up” to the GLOBE 2012 Virtual Student Conference. Photo courtesy M. Burns.

Suggested Activity: What are some ways that your class has made connections with others about the science you are doing? How do you celebrate the Science inquiry work of your students? Also, be sure to visit the GLOBE website and look around the 2013 Virtual Conference.

Wow! NSTA. I have never been to NSTA until invited by the GLOBE Program to present at their booth. I was told over 8,000 science teachers were registered to attend this three day event. It seems I must have spoken to each and every one of them! At least that’s what my feet tell me. Walking into the vendor hall is, in itself, an experience. National Geographic, NOAA, NSF, and Sea World were there. All the biggies in the science education world were there. Then there were the ones I never heard of before: Zooniverse, Standard Deviants Accelerate, WorldStrides and so many others. Then there was the GLOBE Program booth. Two stories tall, blue with many larger-than-life pictures. Definitely an “AH-HA” moment!

An image of the GLOBE booth at the 2013 NSTA meeting

We all joked a bit as we strapped on the “Justin Bieber” headset as we began our presentation. It was hard for me to keep it down to 20 minutes. There have been so many great stories to tell! The audience ranged from people who had never heard of the GLOBE Program before to our venerable original Gary.

I also found the time to attend one of the workshops to beta test the new eTraining.  This was really exciting and hopefully will open up the doors for many teachers to be able to bring the GLOBE Program to their students. Since the training was on the cloud protocol, we even went outside to identify clouds and calculate the percent of cloud cover.  Unfortunately there weren’t many clouds in the sky. I did not hear any complaints about the bright sunny sky, however!

Believe it or not, we even found time to relax a bit one evening and have dinner together and share even more stories. That is one of the really neat things about being part of the GLOBE community. Even though separated by miles and time, whenever GLOBE folks meet, there are always the wonderful stories to be shared.

My many thanks go out to everyone who made this once-in-a-lifetime experience possible.

The overall winner for the competition comes from Kingsburg High School in Kingsburg, California, USA.

The winners, broken down by region are (click on the school’s name to open up the video in a different window):

Africa: Ilboru High School from Arusha, Tanzania

Asia and Pacific: Donchanwittayakom School in Donchan District, Thailand

Europe and Eurasia: SIES Vega de San Mateo from Islas Canarias, España

Latin America and Caribbean: Domingo Faustino Sarmiento from Tierra Del Fuego, Argentina

Near East and North Africa: The 25th Secondary Girls School at Al-Madinah Al-Monawarah from Al-Madinah Al-Monawarah, Saudi Arabia

North America: Madison Plains High School from London, Ohio

We really enjoyed seeing all of the wonderful videos created by our GLOBE students.  Please be sure to visit our Facebook page or our playlist on our YouTube Channel to see more videos from the competition, including second and third place winners from each region.

Suggested Activity: What did you think of these videos?  Let us know here through a comment, on our Facebook page, or on the video directly!

Early sailors traveling the world’s oceans were all too familiar with an area of the tropical seas characterized by lack of winds and violent thunderstorms.  They called this zone “the doldrums” and dreaded being “stuck in the doldrums.” In his Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner, English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge offered the following description of the Pacific doldrums:

All in a hot and copper sky,
The bloody Sun, at noon,
Right up above the mast did stand,
No bigger than the Moon.

Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, no breath no motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.

Today, we have a better understanding of this phenomenon and now know this area as the Intertropical Convergence Zone, or ITCZ.  It shapes atmospheric circulation patterns throughout the world and is considered to be the most prominent rainfall feature on the planet; critical in determining who gets fresh water and who doesn’t in the world’s equatorial regions.  The ITCZ is defined by the coming together, or convergence, of the northern and southern hemisphere trade winds and a decrease in the pressure gradient.  Specifically, in the north, trade winds move in a southwesterward direction originating from the northeast, with somewhat of the opposite effect in the southern hemisphere (where trade winds blow from the southeast to the northwest).

A) Idealized winds generated by pressure gradient and Coriolis Force. B) Actual wind patterns owing to land mass distribution.
From: Figure 7.7 in The Atmosphere, 8th edition, Lutgens and Tarbuck, 8th edition, 2001.

The intense tropical sun pours heat into the atmosphere forcing the air to rise through convection and results in precipitation.  Rain clouds up to 9,144 m (30,000 ft) thick can produce up to 4 m (or 13ft) of rain per year in some places.  The ITCZ is not a stationary phenomenon nor are its movements symmetrical above and below the equator.  Many factors, including seasons and land masses, influence its overall movement.

Southern shift of ITCZ in January.
From Figure 7.9 in The Atmosphere, 8th edition, Lutgens and Tarbuck, 8th edition, 2001.

Northern shift of ITCZ in July.
From Figure 7.9 in The Atmosphere, 8th edition, Lutgens and Tarbuck, 8th edition, 2001.

With this knowledge in mind, we first encountered some of the effects of the ITCZ last year, as we approached the Caribbean coast of Panama aboard our sailing research vessel (RV) Llyr in July 2012. The map above shows the ITCZ located very near to Panama, the narrow strip of land that connects North, Central and South America.   At a latitude of about 9°North, we met up with the storms of the ITCZ during the night.  We could see the arrival of a band of storms on our ship’s radar and plotted a course to avoid them.  The storms had other plans, and we spent the night in their midst, at times feeling like they were chasing us as we tried to take evasive action while they kept building right overhead. Lightning lit the sea around us in an eerie glow and we could see, through the rain, bolts striking not far from the ship.  The next morning, tired but safe, we sailed into the harbor in Bocas del Toro, Panama, having had our introduction to the ITCZ.

Image of the RV Llyr. From Berkshire Sweet Gold

We came to Panama as part of a multi-year research expedition aboard RV Llyr, studying coral reefs, sustainable fisheries and changes taking place in the ocean.  As farmers, we have studied weather for many years, understanding oceans and atmospheric circulation as integrated systems that help produce weather at our forest farm in New England. As social scientists and human ecologists, our interest lies in researching the myriad links between biological and cultural diversity as key elements in sustainable development.  In the coming weeks, we will transit the famous Panama Canal aboard our 53′ steel ketch, and once again pass through “the doldrums” as we make passage for the Marquesas in French Polynesia.  During the 30+ day passage, we’ll be participating in global plankton studies and weather surveys. During our passages through the Pacific Islands, specifically French Polynesia, the Cook Islands, Tonga, and finally Fiji, we’ll perform reef surveys on scuba and hopefully meet with local schools to share the findings and experiences of our expedition.  We are a family of five, with three boys on board, and additional crew members and scientists joining us on expedition.  We look forward to sharing our journey.

Suggested activity: Do you live in a region affected by the ITCZ?  We’d love to hear about your experience as these storms pass through.  Send us a story or an image you have captured about the ITCZ either through a comment here, our website, or our Facebook page.  Be sure to collect temperature and precipitation data to document how your location is affected by the ITCZ, and think about what influence these two atmospheric variables may have on other GLOBE protocols.

When we decided that our effort to understand fresh water systems would move from Lake Superior to the Mississippi River it meant more than the change from a lentic system – still waters (as lakes or ponds) to a lotic system  – actively moving water.  It also became a matter of defining the cultural system that is part of the river.

Kate Crowley sits in a boat on Lake Superior, which shows how calm the waters are. Photo Courtesy of Mike Link.

On Lake Superior two countries shared the large lake, Canada and the United States, with one province in Canada and three states in the US.  The states were at similar latitudes since the lake’s largest measurement is east/west.  The people who live along the lake have adapted to similar climate and forest types and therefore have similar lifestyles.  They also have very similar immigration patterns with predominately northern European ethnic backgrounds.  These individuals came for logging, trapping, and mining opportunities,  so they were recruited from countries where those skills were common.  The American Indian population was predominately Algonquin – Cree First Nation in Canada, Ojibwe in the US, with a few Dakota (Sioux bands) remaining from the time before they were displaced by wars with the Ojibwe/Cree.

As we discussed in our first post, The Mississippi River has a watershed of 31 states and two Canadian Provinces.  Canada does not border the river, but it has a few tributaries that feed into the overall system.  Therefore, the political divisions of the river are all part of the US. Out of these 31 states, 10 actually border the Mississippi.

The river begins in the area of Northern Boreal Forest, but very near the Great Plains and flows south forming a natural boundary between the Eastern and Western United States.  Its primary tributaries are the Missouri River, which reaches to the mountains and can be said to be part of the Great Plains and American West, and the Ohio River, which runs from Pennsylvania in the east through the Midwestern states of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois.  Historically the Ohio separated the North and the South as much as the famous Mason-Dixon Line – a much more arbitrary boundary.

Since the river runs from the lands of the black spruce and moose to the cypress and the alligator, it is obvious that we would find a lot of change.  Instead of following latitude, the Mississippi follows longitude and the climate shifts drastically from the Gulf of Mexico to the Canadian border.  We took a trip south by car as a preliminary investigation of the river to discover bike routes and make notes of the variations that stood out to two northerners!

Suggested activity: Think about how the Mississippi River would change with latitude as you traveled along its distance from north to south.  How could this inspire a local research project?  With the Phenology and Climate Intensive Observing Period occurring, think of the connection of latitude to phenological events such as Budburst, Green Up and Green Down.  Use GLOBE Student collected data to motivate your research further, and be sure to tell us about it either through a comment, our website, or our Facebook page.

If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?

This expression illustrates at least one reason why, as a scientist, it is so important to communicate the results of our research.  The scientific research we do often can have profound impacts on our field of science and on society, and yet if we do not share our results, how will anyone ever be able to benefit from the results of that hard work?  Moreover, by communicating research results with colleagues in the scientific community, we allow ourselves to receive credit for doing the work, connect with others doing similar work thereby leading to new collaborations, and establish our results within the scientific knowledge base that future research will be built upon.

There are several ways that scientists communicate our results, including written reports and scientific journal publications, and by giving presentations to our colleagues and the public.  One popular venue for scientists to present to colleagues is at scientific conferences.  These are often organized around a common theme, span several days, and include both oral presentations (“talks”) and poster presentations of scientific research results.

GLOBE students presenting a poster presentation at the 2012 GLOBE Student Research Exhibition.

I am currently preparing to attend a scientific conference next week in which I will be presenting some of my research group’s latest results.  Most conferences I attend allow only 15 minutes per oral presentation (and it is recommended you only speak for 12 minutes to allow time for questions), so it is often a challenge to condense your research results into such a short period of time.  It really makes you step back and take a look at what the most important aspects of your project are, and then only talk about those few key points.  For my upcoming conference, however, I have been given 30 minutes to speak.  While I don’t have to worry about focusing my presentation to the point that it can be presented in 15 minutes, I do still have to consider that if I present too much information in that half hour time period my audience will not take away the key points either.  Therefore, I still have to focus my talk to a few key points, and then I can just provide more in depth support for those key findings.

Besides considering how much time I have for my presentation, and what my key message will be, I also have to consider who my audience will be as I prepare my presentation.  At this upcoming conference, I will be speaking to a pretty specialized group of people, however not all of them are scientists, so I will need to define specialized terms and concepts in my presentation.  Moreover, I will have to also really explain up front why my work will matter to them, so that they understand why learning about my results is important to their interests.

Photo of me giving a seminar presentation.

Communicating the results of my scientific research is a very important aspect of my job as a scientist, and one that I do not take lightly.  If I fail to take into account things like the time I am given to present, what my key points are and why they are important, and who my audience is, I will not be successful in communicating what I view as valuable information.   Therefore, I start preparing my presentations early, I practice my presentations, and I also seek feedback from my colleagues to make sure my presentations are clear and help my audience learn something new.   This way I can feel confident that the science that I love so much is really making the impact that it deserves.

Suggested activity:  In your next scientific research project, make sure you communicate your results either in a written report or presentation.  GLOBE provides students with guidance for writing scientific reports, as well as opportunities to present and share their research projects.  For example, the GLOBE Virtual Student Conference is a great venue for students from all over the world to present their research projects!  For more tips on giving scientific presentations, see the GLOBE Student Climate Research Campaign archived webinar entitled “Scientist Skills: Presenting your results”.

Students often struggle to understand the difference between weather and climate, yet this topic is throughout K-12 education in the Next Generation Science Standards due to be released in April 2013 in the United States.  In collaboration with GLOBE, CLACE developed some fun and engaging ways to explore fundamental concepts of climate literacy through an inquiry based video project.  CLACE works to inspire and engage diverse students in science, this specific program is a bilingual Video Lab for Latino students in Boulder, Colorado, USA.

CLACE Students use their video camera to explore climate. Photo courtesy of CLACE.

As a teacher I was surprised on day one with how challenging it was to explain the key distinctions between weather and climate to my sixth to eighth grade students. At first I relied heavily on a commonly used analogy: if climate is all the clothes in your closet, then weather is what you’re wearing today. In an effort to connect with the students we encouraged them to come up with their own analogies. As I dug deeper, I recognized my over-simplified understanding would perpetuate misconceptions.

CLACE Students discuss weather vs. climate in the classroom. Photo courtesy of CLACE.

By collaborating with GLOBE scientists and educators we created a series of lessons and criteria for students to develop their own analogies that explain the difference between weather and climate.  The examples used in the analogies had to satisfy the following criteria: 1) climate is a long term pattern 2) weather changes frequently and 3) the climate is the average of the weather.

A CLACE student edits her climate video. Photo courtesy of CLACE.

We met the students where they were at and together we deepened our understanding and then created short videos to share what we learned.  The result was a series of videos explaining analogies from the students’ own imaginations that resonate with their lives.  For example, if climate is the average goals I score each game for my middle school soccer team then weather are the goals I score in a single game.

We started with a simple question: what’s the difference between climate and weather?  By following our middle school students’ lead we found it’s really not as simple as it appears and led to rewarding conversations and countless other questions. By investigating this basic concept our students built their own foundation of climate literacy.

Suggested activity: View more of CLACE’s videos at the following link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nlwfV8cfqc.  These videos are available in both English and Spanish.  Also, be sure to follow along with The GLOBE Program on Facebook starting in April as we announce the winners of the 2013 Earth Day Video Competition.  And there’s still time to prepare for the 2013 Virtual Student Conference, and the CLACE videos may  provide some great inspiration.  The Virtual Student Conference will begin accepting presentations on 6 May.

Asian Tiger Mosquito. From The Center for Invasive Species Research, University of California, Riverside

Beginning in Albania in 1979, this breed of mosquito was introduced into Europe through the transport of goods from its native region of Southeast Asia.  Since then, the population has increased dramatically and has spread to more than 15 countries along Europe’s southern edge.  Additionally, these regions have seen increasingly milder winters and warmer summers, which lend themselves to prime conditions for mosquito larvae to survive.

The Asian Tiger mosquito is known for transmitting various diseases, such as West Nile, yellow fever, dengue, St. Louis and Japanese encephalitis, and chikungyuna.  And while it is native to Southeast Asia, the species has become well adapted to life in a more temperature climate.  It has been found, in fact, that the eggs of the Asian Tiger mosquito living in temperature climates are more cold resistant than their counterparts in tropical climates.  In addition to Southeast Asia and Europe, there are Asian Tiger Mosquitos living in the Americas, the Caribbean, Africa and the Middle East.

Since 2005, the Asian Tiger Mosquito has been blamed for outbreaks of some of these vector-borne diseases in France, Italy and Croatia.  It is feared that as the climate in these regions continues to change, that the frequency of vector-borne diseases will increase.  To support this suspicion, the European Centre for Disease Control used widely-used computer models to simulate weather records for the years of 2030-2050.  They found similar trends of warming continuing, allowing the mosquito to spread to northern Europe.

Suggested Activity: Get involved in mosquito climate research now.  Start by getting involved in the Great Global Investigation of Climate and taking air temperature, soil temperature and precipitation measurements. You can then take these data and connect to the number of reported cases of one of the vector-borne diseases. And make sure to let us know about your research.  You can tell us about it through the GLOBE website or our Facebook Page.

-Jessica Mackaro