11 December 2007

Today I am in San Francisco, California at the Annual American Geophysical Union (AGU) conference. I heard today that there are over 15,000 scientists here. I bet you did not know that scientists are always learning. As you can see in Figure 1, the areas that I flew over were snow covered for the most part, that is if there were no clouds which was very common.

Figure 1. My flight path over the United States from Detroit, Michigan to San Francisco, California.

I took a bunch of pictures as I was flying from Detroit, Michigan to San Francisco, California.

Figure 2. Picture I took from my airplane of a snow covered mountainous area.

The view was great. Isn’t it amazing the quality of pictures that can be taken from an airplane with a regular digital camera? I really enjoy having a window seat when I fly.

A conference like this one is a way for scientists to share information. There are two ways that we present our work to other scientists. One is through an oral presentation, i.e. giving a talk. This is similar to what your teacher might do presenting information to you in class. The other way is through poster presentations. See figure 3 below. In this picture, there are hundreds of posters being presented at the same time. Poster presentations are very similar to science fair projects that students do.

Figure 3. Poster session at the AGU meeting December 11, 2007.

Attending the AGU meeting is also a chance for me to see my scientist friends again.

I learned some interesting things about remote sensing of snow today. Scientists at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center are using a satellite sensor called AMSR-E (Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer EOS). It is a sensor that uses microwave wavelengths to estimate the amount of water, called snow water equivalent, in the snow at specific locations. Interestingly, one scientist said that the ability to accurately retrieve snow water equivalent from AMSR-E is dependent on the surface temperature. This may be a type of project that could use student observations from the surface temperature field campaign.

Thirty schools and counting have participated thus far in the surface temperature field campaign. Thank you for all of your hard work.

Take care,

Dr. C

6 December 2007

So far there have been 291 observations recorded from 27 schools in the surface temperature field campaign. I have had undergraduate students participating, but we haven’t entered our observations yet. So, there will be at least one more school’s data showing up on the GLOBE Web site.

You can see below a list of the schools that have participated and entered data thus far. I would like to highlight some schools that have been doing an exemplary job:

• The Lorain County Community Early College High School in Elyria, Ohio has entered the most observations so far with 37. Nice job Rose O’Toole-Hamman and students!
• In a close second are:
  • Birchwood School in Cleveland, Ohio with 32 (thanks Linda Brown and students); and
  • Dalton High School in Dalton, Ohio (thanks Jerry Wilmer and students!) with 30.

Data collection accounts for about 80% of time spent on my research project. Without data, there is no way to do the research. Often I am faced with having to revise my research projects because of lack of data. It seems like you never have the right locations or right times to do a thorough study.

Most of the schools are now reporting snow with their surface temperature observations. As you can see in the maps below, there is a lot more snow on the 8 December 2007 image than on the 5 December 2007 image. This was due to a series of Alberta Clippers.

Figure 1. Snow cover for the lower 48 United States for Wednesday, 5 Dec. 2007 (top) and Thursday, 8 Dec. 2007 (bottom). Source: National Operational Hydrologic Remote Sensing Center.

Note the increase in snow cover in Michigan, Ohio, West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland and New Jersey. This was due to the Alberta Clipper that tracked from Alberta down into the United States and out into the Atlantic Ocean not too far from Washington, DC.

There are some really good examples of places where there is snow on the grass but not on the parking lot. For instance, Whitehall High School in Whitehall, Michigan reported a surface temperature of 0° C on a grassy area with 14 cm of snow. Interestingly, they reported 0° C for a bare parking lot. I am very interested to find out if this is a common occurrence to not see an effect due to the snow.

This year we have much more snow than during the field campaign last year. In fact, it was so warm last year during the surface temperature field campaign that the broccoli in my garden was still growing. I pick my last broccoli on January 1, 2007 last winter. This winter the broccoli was dead several weeks ago because of the cold. So you may be asking, “Why was it so warm in the Great Lakes region last December and so cold this December?” My understanding is that last December there was an El Nino in the Pacific Ocean that lead to warm conditions in the Great Lakes region. This December there is a La Nina in the Pacific Ocean that is leading to the cold conditions in the Great Lakes. I won’t go into the details of this. That can be the subject of another blog entry.

The number of schools participating has stayed nearly the same over the last couple of days. There are many more schools involved, but they have not been entering their observations yet on the GLOBE Web site.

I think I’ll get my cross country skis out.

Dr. C

The students went to 100 feet on the dive — that’s about 30 meters. From my introduction to the Day 5 blog, 10 meters of water weighs about the same as the entire atmosphere. Thus at 30 meters below the surface, the students were experiencing pressures four times that experienced at the surface. Such pressures can cause problems for divers unless they are careful. “Dive profiles” are designed to keep divers safe. If divers ascend too fast from too deep, for example, they increase their risk of getting decompression sickness, or “the bends.” The sickness occurs when gases absorbed in the body at high pressure form small bubbles in the blood when the pressure drops.

When we were on a field program in the South Pacific, divers had not only to watch their dive profiles — they were forbidden to fly the day after a dive. This is because of the possibility that the aircraft might lose pressure at altitude. Also, aircraft at altitude aren’t pressured to surface pressure but to around 6000 feet.

In contrast, cabin pressure in the space shuttle is equivalent to sea level, according to Robert Mellette of the Yale New Haven Teachers Institute.

Day 8 - 18 October 2007

The two groups have rejoined and spent the day on four dives. The deepest one was to about 100 ft. They must follow strict control of their dive profiles to be able to complete all the dives. Several of them broke their profiles and had to sit out the last dives. The ODC students were also still recovering from the climb up Mauna Kea and two were too tired to make the dives.

The first dive is on a wreck, and the students did some archaeological surveys, using the techniques they learned in the classroom and practiced from shore the day before with Dr. Hans Van Tilburg.

The day ended with a talk by Astronaut and Shuttle Mission Commander Dom Gorie, who will take the ODC banner with him on his space shuttle mission, scheduled to launch 14 February 2008.

Madison - 13
SNI participant

We did a dive at the Yard Oiler wreck. I went to about 70 feet. There were huge turtles on the deck of the ship. We also saw a few Humuhumunukunukuapua’a, Hawaii’s state fish (a triggerfish). The second dive was on a reef. We saw a white tip and I did a swim-through. We also saw a sleeping sea turtle. Our third dive was on a flipped barge. We did photography with Dr. Gleason. There was a current. After our dives, we had a lecture given by Commander Dom Gorie, an astronaut. He told us about NASA and his previous and upcoming trips into space.

Mack - 15
Operation: Deep Climb participant

The first dive was a wreck dive. The wreck was in about 100ft of water and it was called the YO. After the first dive most of the ODC was tired so we stayed on the boat and took a nap. After the second dive we went back to port for a quick lunch and then it was right back onto the boat for the last two dives. The third dive was a wreck where we had to measure its length and width. On this dive most people broke there profile so most of us did not dive the fourth dive.

David – 15
Operation: Deep Climb participant

The water here was so much clearer than in the Tampa Bay. We had fun.

Anna – 16
Operation: Deep Climb participant

Today we went diving with Island Divers. The ODC kids and I had to rent gear. For the first dive I was buddies with Santannah, and we dove on a wreck, I saw sea turtles. I was very tired and wasn’t up to the second dive. Then we docked for lunch and went back out for two more dives.

I did the first dive of the afternoon, but I broke my dive profile, so did many other people. Only about five people were able to do the last dive. It didn’t bother me that I missed it because I just enjoyed watching a sunset from a boat in Hawaii. What more could you ask for?

Tonight we had pizza while Commander Gorie (Andrew’s Dad) told us about his career as an astronaut.

The KOK is the ship. Its full name is the KA`IMIKAI-O-KANALOA. Just a note that Scubanauts is misspelled on the cake.

Day 7 - 17 October 2007

Anna – 16
Operation: Deep Climb participant

Today Sergeant Gregory, Captain Rob, the other seven teenagers and I flew back from the Big Island [to Oahu] and returned to Pearl Harbor. Tonight we had a barbecue with the entire rest of the group. It was nice seeing everyone else again and hearing about their trip and telling about ours. Mr. Stephens, who I haven’t talked to a lot, congratulated me on completing the mountain. I really appreciated this because Mr. Stephens has done so many outstanding things and his comment seemed really sincere.

Mack - 15
Operation: Deep Climb participant

Today we were allowed to sleep in a little till around eight thirty when Mark one of the producers told us the bad news. The KOK had needed to undergo some repairs that they thought would be down by the time we got off the mountain, but they were wrong. The KOK was still not fixed so instead we were flown back to Honolulu to catch back up with the other group. When we got back to the Bachelor’s Officer’s Quarters we were allowed to relax till dinner which was a BBQ. After the BBQ we all went back to sleep.

5 December 2007

The surface temperature field campaign continues to go well. Yesterday, 38 observations were posted by students. I believe this number will increase as students and teachers get their observations into the GLOBE Web site.

Almost all of the observations are below the freezing mark today. The coldest surface temperature observations came from the Moosewood Farm Home School (teacher Deb Bennett) in Fairbanks, Alaska. The lowest value of surface temperature they measured so far was –25.9° C (-14.9° F).

The weather in the United States has remained wintry and significant snowfall has occurred in the Great Lakes region to the east coast. I measured around 5 cm of snow when it stopped snowing here in Toledo, Ohio today. I know that other places measured a lot more snow. Greg Lopatka from The Morton Arboretum Youth Education Department in Lisle, Illinois measured 15 cm (6 inches) of snow. The snow was caused by an Alberta Clipper. An Alberta Clipper is a type of low pressure system (storm) that moves from Alberta, Canada down across the Great Lakes. Storms in North America typically form to the east of the Rocky Mountains in either Colorado or Alberta, along the Gulf of Mexico or along the east coast of the United States. I am not familiar will storm tracks in Europe and Asia so I will check it out.

You can see in the map below that parts of the upper Great Lakes have over 50 cm of snow on the ground. The snow depth in the Great Lakes and northeast US is high for this time of year. Are we going to have a cold winter in this part of the world? We shall see.

Figure 1. Snow depth in the United States December 5, 2007. Source: National Operational Hydrologic Remote Sensing Center.

With all of the snow on the ground, the clear skies and calm winds due to high pressure, air temperatures in the Great Lakes area will get very cold tonight. We should see record low temperatures. The temperature is already –13° C (9° F) at my house this evening and the dew point is around –17° C (0° F). The dew point is the temperature at which condensation occurs. If the temperature reaches the dew point and condensation occurs, fog will form and latent energy will be released. This will keep the temperature from going down any further. So, we can expect that the low air temperature tonight at my house in Temperance, Michigan will be around –17° C (0° F). The record low for this area is –18° C (-2° F) from 1976 which was a very cold winter. The low temperatures in Minnesota tonight are going to be extremely cold. At the time I am writing this, it is –28° C (-20° F) in central Minnesota. Temperatures may get down to –34° C (30° F). The surface of the snow will be even colder. Why does the new snow cause the air temperature to get so cold? How will the surface temperature compare to the air temperature?

Students from more schools have entered data onto the GLOBE website for the surface temperature field campaign:

Bundle up.

Dr. C