This is the second of a series of blogs for Dr. Kevin Czajkowski’s surface-temperature field campaign. It is exciting to see how many schools are participating! Here in Colorado, we ate our lunches outdoors earlier this week, while the eastern U.S. was quite cold. In contrast to Ohio, where Dr. C. lives, Boulder, Colorado’s snow was quite late this year. The “official” first snow as measured for our “snow pool” was on 4 December! Other parts of Colorado (and Boulder’s official Weather Service site) got snow before 4 December, but still much later than average.

Hi All,

As of December 4, 2008, there were 207 surface temperature observations from 27 schools added to the GLOBE website. Go Team! This is great.

Here are schools that have entered data so far in the field campaign:

Roswell Kent Middle School, Akron, OH, US [12 rows]
Dalton High School, Dalton, OH, US [12 rows]
The Morton Arboretum Youth Education Dept., Lisle, IL, US
Peebles High School, Peebles, OH, US [32 rows]
Gimnazjum No 7 Jana III Sobieskiego, Rzeszow, PL [6 rows]
Penta Career Center, Perrysburg, OH, US
Canaan Middle School, Plain City, OH, US [2 rows]
Brazil High, Brazil Village, Trinidad and Tobago [6 rows]
Kilingi-Nomme Gymnasium, Parnumaa, EE [12 rows]
Swift Creek Middle School, Tallahassee, FL, US [2 rows]
National Presbyterian School, Washington, DC, US
Maumee High School, Maumee, OH, US [4 rows]
Whittier Elementary School, Toledo, OH, US [2 rows]
Huntington High School, Huntington, WV, US [8 rows]
Warrensville Heights High School, Warrensville Heights, OH, US [2 rows]
Bellefontaine High School, Bellefontaine, OH, US [8 rows]
Oak Glen High School, New Cumberland, WV, US [12 rows]
Nordonia Middle School, Northfield, OH, US [5 rows]
Orrville High School, Orrville, OH, US
Bowling Green Christian Academy, Bowling Green, OH, US [3 rows]
Highlands Elementary School, Naperville, IL, US [4 rows]
South Suburban Montessori School, Brecksville, OH, US [4 rows]
John Marshall High School, Glendale, WV, US [28 rows]
Birchwood School, Cleveland, OH, US [10 rows]
Hudsonville High School, Hudsonville, MI, US [9 rows]
The University of Toledo, Toledo, OH, US [4 rows]
Main Street School, Norwalk, OH, US [16 rows]

If you have entered data today and do not see your school’s name, do not worry. The database is updated each night. I expect that there will be many more schools involved this year.

I love the comments that the students put with your observations. Here is one from Roswell Kent Middle School, “shoes sunk into mud approx. 40 mm deep.”

Oak Glenn High School, “Buses had recently (past 10 minutes) driven around the perimeter of this surface.”

Peebles High School, “SLIGHLY WINDY AND VERY COLD!!!!!!!!!!!”

Sorry about the cold. That seems to be a theme of everyone’s observations. Field work is sometimes dirty and you have to endure difficult situations. Take a look at this picture of me doing field work in Oklahoma in 1999. I was nervous about the bull.

Figure 1. Dr. C. doing field work on an Oklahoma Pasture.

The cold weather sure has arrived in the Great Lakes. Temperatures are averaging 5-8º C below average for this time of year. I set up an ice rink in the back yard of my house this morning for my kids to skate on. The last two years I was not able to get ice to form until mid January. The cold weather is going to stick around in the eastern United States for a least another week as well as in Estonia. Trinidad and Tobago is in the tropics and stays warm all year long so I would expect it to stay that way.

The forecast in the United States is for a series of “Alberta Clippers” to sweep down out of Canada towards the Great Lakes and eventually off the east coast (see the figure below). Each storm will bring 10-30 mm of snow to most areas near the Great Lakes. These storms are very dry because they have not tapped into any ocean moisture. Once the storms pass, they bring very cold air out of Canada behind them. This is how I know that it will be cold for the next week.

Figure 2. Map showing storm (low pressure area, denoted by the L) coming out of the Canadian Province of Alberta (the letters are partially covered by the “L.” These low pressure areas are called Alberta Clippers because they often come out of Alberta.

Dr. C.

A series of guest blog entries by Dr. Kevin Czakjowski on the 2008 Surface Temperature Field Campaign will be interleaved with the regular Chief Scientist blogs. See the Introduction to the Surface Temperature Field Campaign.

I’ve often written about clouds on this blog. They are so easy to observe. Today I’m writing about birds since they are easy to observe as well.

It’s fun to watch birds. Many people spend their lives counting how many birds they have seen over their lifetime. I started doing this recently as well. But I find the more interesting part of my “life list” tends to be notes about what the birds are doing. For example, “We saw a half-dozen Yellow-Headed Blackbirds foraging on a lawn in the middle of a blizzard,” or “The fledgling Kestrels were learning how to fly under the watchful eye of both parents,” or, “At sunrise, we watched the Crows fly from the foothills to the west into town for a day of feeding.”

Although a pair of binoculars helps in watching those birds that are small or far away, you can see an amazing amount close up. This is particularly so for tamer ducks or geese. In the United States, we often see Mallards or Canada Geese (Figure 1). And many are not too afraid of people, so you can watch them without disturbing them too much.

Figure 1. Male Mallards (right) swimming with a Canada Goose. Little Dixie Lake, Boone County, Missouri, U.S.A.

Mallards have an interesting way of feeding. Their front ends go under water and their back ends tip into the air. This is called “dabbling” (Figure 2). Mallards eat mostly plants – grains, seeds of some trees, bulrushes; but they also eat some animal matter as well, such as mollusks, insects, tadpoles, snails, and so on.

Figure 2. Dabbling Mallards. Also at Little Dixie Lake

Unlike watching clouds, you can “watch birds” without looking at them. When I was a teenager, I went birding with a blind man on the island of Oahu in Hawaii. He could tell what birds were around simply by their calls – and maybe a little bit from the noise the birds make as they move around, since some species sit in one place, and others flit around. He would describe to me what the bird looked like and point in the direction the sound came from. I met another birder who often observed birds from their sound. He starting doing this because he was a runner, and he didn’t want to have to stop and look. And knowing the bird sounds is useful when you simply can’t locate a bird hiding in a tree or bush. And you don’t need binoculars.

It’s important to stay far away from wild birds or their nests. During nesting seasons, many parks and nature reserves close nesting areas so that the birds can raise their young undisturbed. Also, you shouldn’t feed the birds in wild places. If you want to watch wild birds, you should keep your distance and use binoculars. Or watch them from a blind, or if you are lucky enough, through the window of your home or school.

Birds and the Seasons

The migration of birds in the spring and fall has thrilled people for centuries. In North America, we like to hear the honking of geese flying overhead during the spring and fall. The Canada Geese fly in large V-formations. This enables the geese to the rear to benefit from the air currents created by the geese in front. If you watch closely, you will see them change places once in a while.

Although you can enjoy birds any time of year, the best times to watch birds is in the spring, when the males are singing to attract mates. Each species has a different song, and the songs can vary from place to place. Or even, though less so, from bird to bird. At this time, it’s even more important to keep your distance and use binoculars to watch them.

Why do birds migrate? No one knows for sure, but it probably has to do with finding food and a safe place to make a nest. And this will vary, like migrations, with the type of bird. In the far north, for example, there are fewer predators that could survive through the harsh winters, so nesting there might be a bit safer for birds that nest on the ground during the summers. Insect-eating birds won’t want to spend much time in an area when the temperature is too cold for insects.

One interesting topic that scientists are studying now is how climate change affects bird populations. Many scientists have found that birds arrive earlier in the spring than they used to. Also, some birds are extending their ranges northward. In the GLOBE Seasons and Biomes/IPY Pole-to-Pole video conference (see March 2007 blog), one of the teachers noted that Magpies were reaching farther northward into Alaska, for example. Scientists continue to try to sort out the role of climate change in the changes of numbers of different types of birds. There are many other factors to consider, such as the number and type of predators, changes in land use, and the use of pesticides.

What birds are you seeing this season? Ask older members of your family if the types of birds are different now, or if their numbers have changed.

And, if you are interested in further information about observing hummingbirds, go to This Week at Hilton Pond.

This is the first blog about Dr. Kevin Czakjowski’s 2008 Surface Temperature Field Campaign. They will be interleaved with the Chief Scientist blogs, of which the current one is on watching birds.

Hi All,

I am very excited to be kicking off another GLOBE surface temperature field campaign. The field campaign will go from December 1, 2008 to December 19, 2008. Students are encouraged to take surface temperature observations of their local schoolyards.

Here are schools that have entered data so far in the field campaign:

The Morton Arboretum Youth Education Dept., Lisle, IL, US
Peebles High School, Peebles, OH, US
Kilingi-Nomme Gymnasium, Parnumaa, Estonia
Bellefontaine High School, Bellefontaine, OH, US
Oak Glen High School, New Cumberland, WV, US
Birchwood School, Cleveland, OH, US
The University of Toledo, Toledo, OH, US
Main Street School, Norwalk, OH, US

If you have entered data today and do not see your school’s name, do not worry. The database is updated each night. I expect that there will be many more schools involved this year.

Problems with Data Entry
I’ve looked over the data that has been submitted to GLOBE thus far. It looks like everyone is using Celsius. That is great. And, everyone is entering their snow depth in mm. Thanks. But…. A number of observations appear to have the incorrect Universal Time. It looks like a few of you saw your mistake and corrected it entering the new time of observation. This is critical. Entering the correct time is crucial to a good field campaign and having usable data. Don’t feel bad if you entered the wrong time though. I am having my graduate students in my remote sensing class observe surface temperature and enter data on the GLOBE website during the field campaign. I can tell that they entered the incorrect Universal Time the first time they entered their data. I’ll talk to them in class tomorrow about it.

This year’s theme is the International Polar Year associated with GLOBE’s Seasons and Biomes Project. We are hoping that as students gain an appreciation for the importance of the polar regions on the climate and that the students take the opportunity to learn more about the polar regions.

Alaska
It is really cold in Alaska today. Take a look at the temperatures in the figure below. The temperatures are in degrees Fahrenheit because that is the way surface weather data is displayed in the United States. Below you’ll see that the temperature in Fairbanks at 1623 UTC was –31º F (-35º C). That is really cold. The temperature in Fairbanks is colder than any temperature I have ever personally experienced. That cold air came over from Siberia in Russia. You’ll notice that at very cold temperatures, the Fahrenheit value and Celsius value are almost the same. What temperature are the Fahrenheit and Celsius temperature the same? I know that a couple schools in Alaska will be participating in the field campaign. It will be really interesting to see the temperatures the students report.

Figure 1. Weather observations in Alaska and surroundings.

The Forecast
The forecast for the next week is for cold air to move out of Alaska and northern Canada down into the continental United States. The cold air in Alaska is due to a high pressure system. When the cold air starts to move out of Alaska, it will take on the characteristics of the new surface it is moving over. If there is snow on the ground over which the cold air is moving, the air mass will not change. Basically, the cold air stays cold. Snow on the ground helps to insulate the air from the ground. If there isn’t any snow on the ground, the ground will warm the air above it and it won’t be as cold. Looking at the snow cover map for North America below, you can see that most of Canada is covered with snow and there is quite a bit of snow in the Great Lakes region. Having this much snow in the Great Lakes region this early in December is somewhat unusual. There usually is not this much snow this early. Once the cold air comes out of Alaska, if the air travels over snow covered regions, the air will not change much and those areas will be very cold. This is something to look forward to if you like winter like I do. I can’t wait until it is cold enough to set up the ice rink in the back yard.

Many of you will be able to report snow on the ground when you take your surface temperature observations. Here are two questions that you can think about while take the measurements.
1) How does snow cover affect the temperature during the day?
2) How does snow cover affect the temperature at night?

Figure 2. Current snow over North America.

I hope to see more and more data come into the GLOBE website!

Dr. C