As Dr. C wrote during his Surface Temperature Field Campaign, the weather in mid-December was cold in many parts of the United States. At our house here in Boulder, Colorado (Figure 1), this morning’s minimum temperature was -21 degrees Celsius. Just 20 kilometers east of here, the minimum temperatures was 27 degrees Celsius below zero, and about 50 km to the southeast of here, the minimum temperature reached -28 degrees Celsius. The weather reports were saying that those of us who live closer to the mountains weren’t having temperatures as cold as those to the east of us.

Figure 1. Map showing location of Boulder and CASES-99. The colors represent contours. The Rocky Mountains are yellow, orange, and red on this map. The colors denote elevation, with yellows, oranges and reds indicating higher terrain.

How does the air temperature relate to the surface temperatures that the students measured during Dr. C.’s field campaign? To answer this question, I looked at how the surface temperature related to the air temperature at our house.

The air temperature at our house was measured at 1-1.5 meters in our carport, and also on a thermometer I carried with me on our early-morning walk around the top of our mesa. That temperature, as noted above, was -21 degrees Celsius. To get the surface temperature, I put the thermometer I was carrying on the surface after I finished my walk. I am assuming that this temperature is close to the temperature that would be measured by a radiometer like the one used in GLOBE. I took the reading ten minutes later.

Just for fun, I also measured the temperature at the bottom of our snow (now 10 cm deep) and at the top of the last snow (about in the middle of the snow layer). At these two places, I put the snow back on top of the thermometer, waited ten minutes, and then uncovered the thermometer and read the temperature. The new snow was soft and fluffy, while the old snow was crusty; so it was easy to find the top of the old snow.

All of the measurements were taken close to sunrise, when the minimum temperature is normally reached, and the area where I took the measurements was in the shade.

Figure 2 shows the temperatures that I measured.

Figure 2. Temperature measurements at the snow surface, between the old and new snow, at the base of the snow layer, and at 1-1.5 meters above the surface at 7:30 in the morning, local time.

That is, the temperature was coolest right at the top of the snow. The temperature was warmer at the top of the old snow, and warmest at the base of the snow. As noted in earlier blogs, the snow keeps the ground warm.

The temperature at the top of the snow was also cooler than the air temperature. The surface temperature is often cooler than the air temperature in the morning, especially on cold, clear, snowy mornings like this one. However, on hot, clear, days in the summertime, the ground is warmer than the air.

Here are two sets of measurements taken in the Midwestern United States in October of 1999. Could you guess which measurements were taken at night, and which measurements were taken during the day even if the times weren’t on the labels? The first plot is from data taken after sunset, while the second plot was from data taken at noon.

Figure 3. Data from the 1999 Cooperative Atmosphere Exchange Study (CASES-99) program in the central United States, courtesy of J. Sun, NCAR.

This is the third installment from Dr. Czajkowski Last night, we had snow here in Colorado. In my front yard in Boulder, we had about 23 centimeters of snow. Three kilometers to the east, at Foothills Lab (close to the GLOBE offices), the “official” reading ws 17 centimeters — a six-centimeter difference of 3 kilometers. This difference is real — snowfall amounts are often greater closer to the mountains.

Hi All,

Things are continuing to go well with the surface temperature field campaign. As of December 8, 2008, there were 317 surface temperature observations from 31 schools were added to the GLOBE website.

Major Winter Storm in the United States

There is a major winter storm in the center of the United States this Tuesday, 9 December, 2008. This map is for 1:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time which is 1800 UTC. This low pressure system with its associated warm front and cold front is producing a lot of rain, “wintry mix” (rain and snow, pink shades in figure 1), and some snow in the Midwest. You can also see that there is a cold high pressure system in Nevada and Idaho.

Figure1: Surface weather map 9 December 2008, The radar shows snow in the blue shades and the heaviest rain is shown in black. Figure from http://www.rap.ucar.edu/

There have been some pretty extensive snowfall in the United States this fall and early winter. But, you can see from the figures below that there was actually more extensive snowfall cover in 2007. By the weekend the weather pattern in the United States is going to change to have a storm in the western United States and warm weather in the eastern United States. This storm should give significant snow out west and to the Rocky Mountains. This will make the weather in the Great Lakes warmer.

Figure 2: Snow cover and depth from NOAA for 9 December, 2008 .

Figure 3: Snow Cover in the United States for 8 December 2007 from NOAA.

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

More and more schools are participating and getting their data on the GLOBE website. Keep up the good work.

Roswell Kent Middle School, Akron, OH, US [9 rows]
Dalton High School, Dalton, OH, US [8 rows]
Chartiers-Houston Jr./Sr. High School, Houston, PA, US [2 rows]
Lakewood Middle School, Hebron, OH, US
The Morton Arboretum Youth Education Dept., Lisle, IL, US
Peebles High School, Peebles, OH, US [25 rows]
Gimnazjum No 7 Jana III Sobieskiego, Rzeszow, PL [6 rows]
Penta Career Center, Perrysburg, OH, US [3 rows]
Canaan Middle School, Plain City, OH, US [2 rows]
Mill Creek Middle School, Comstock Park, MI, US [8 rows]
Brazil High, Brazil Village, TT [9 rows]
Kilingi-Nomme Gymnasium, Parnumaa, EE [10 rows]
Swift Creek Middle School, Tallahassee, FL, US [3 rows]
National Presbyterian School, Washington, DC, US
Maumee High School, Maumee, OH, US [5 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
Bellefontaine High School, Bellefontaine, OH, US [6 rows]
Oak Glen High School, New Cumberland, WV, US [12 rows]
Nordonia Middle School, Northfield, OH, US [4 rows]
Orrville High School, Orrville, OH, US
Bowling Green Christian Academy, Bowling Green, OH, US [6 rows]
McTigue Middle School, Toledo, OH, US [3 rows]
Highlands Elementary School, Naperville, IL, US [2 rows]
South Suburban Montessori School, Brecksville, OH, US [3 rows]
John Marshall High School, Glendale, WV, US [30 rows]
Birchwood School, Cleveland, OH, US [9 rows]
Hudsonville High School, Hudsonville, MI, US [7 rows]
The University of Toledo, Toledo, OH, US [4 rows]
Main Street School, Norwalk, OH, US [16 rows]

Stay Dry.
Dr. C

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.

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

I’m going to interrupt blogging about surprising liquid puddles and soil temperature to talk about the Second Pole-to-Pole Videoconference, which took place yesterday (8 April 2008). Several scientists participated, as did five schools: in Ushuaia, Argentina, the Escuela Provincial No. 38 Julio Argentina Roca; and in Alaska, the Randy Smith Middle School (Fairbanks), Moosewood Farm Home School (Fairbanks), Wasilla High School (Wasilla), and Innoko River School (Shageluk). The Web Conference was hosted by the GLOBE Seasons and Biomes Earth System Science team, at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks.

Figure 1. Locations of the schools in Alaska. Courtesy Dr. Elena Sparrow

Flgure 2. Location of Ushuaia, which is near the southern tip of South America. Part of Antarctica appears on the southern part of the map.

The focus was on climate change, in particular:

1. The most important seasonal indicators (things that change with season)
2. Whether they are being impacted by climate change (if so, how?)
3. How students could study these indicators to see if they are impacted by climate change.

As was the case last year, the students had an opportunity to ask questions of the students at the other schools as well as the scientists, but the conversation was more structured. We organized the conversations into three rounds. In Round 1, the Alaskan and Argentinean students were to ask each other about signs of seasonal change or share their own observations. In Round 2, the focus was on how to narrow questions down enough so that students could investigate them. And in Round 3, we were supposed to discuss the ways the investigations could be done.

The questions in Round 1 were wide-ranging. Why do leaves change color? Why is the soil frozen when the air is warm? Does the melting of permafrost cause damage to buildings and trees? Are glaciers disappearing? Do scientists use Native knowledge in their research? How does climate change affect plants and animals?

We learned that soil below ground warms and cools with the seasons more slowly than the air, and – the farther you go down, the less the temperature changes (this is also discussed in the previous few blogs). We also learned that the changes in the lower layers of the soil took place after the changes higher up (in scientific terms, the changes in the lower layers lags the changes in the upper layers). So a student was able to guess that late summer is the best time to test for permafrost, rather than the height of summer, when the sun angle is the highest.

We discovered that scientists are using Native knowledge in their research in many parts of the world, including not only Alaska and Canada, but also in Australia. We learned that magpies are coming farther north to Shageluk, and there are more pine grosbeaks than there used to be, although a student in Fairbanks didn’t notice any changes. We also learned that tree line is moving up in the mountains near Ushuaia.

In Round 2, questions focused on some fascinating things to investigate, including changes in the snowboarding season (of interest to students in both hemispheres), changes in temperature and precipitation, and succession of species after wildland fires. In fact, the students at Shageluk are already investigating the succession of species of some land recovering from a forest fire (see pictures at the Shageluk web site). The discussion of temperatures taught us the difference between maritime (Ushuaia and Wasilla) and continental (Fairbanks and Shageluk) climates: Ushuaia rarely gets below freezing, but Fairbanks has temperatures as low as -40 (same in Fahrenheit and Celsius), although such cold temperatures aren’t as common and persistent as they used to be). The discussion of snowboarding led to suggestions of investigating how long ski areas remain open, interviewing someone at a ski area about what conditions are good for snowboarding, thinking about what makes snow last (amount of precipitation, timing of precipitation, temperature). Two intriguing observations were that there were both more cumulus clouds in Ushuaia than there used to be, and more heavy rains.

With so many ideas generated in Round 2, some investigations were already outlined in some detail by the time we got to Round 3 – especially related to snowboarding. But snowboarding ideas continued to come up. A ski area had closed in Ushuaia, because its elevation was too low in the warming climate; and students in both hemispheres thought snowboarding might be an interesting thing to investigate together. Since the seasons are opposite, the study could be continuous.

Some new ideas also emerged about items to investigate. How about looking at when people take off or put on snow tires? Is that a good indicator of climate change? What about using frost tubes to monitor freezing and thawing in the soil in Ushuaia as well as Alaska? And how would frost-tube measurements relate to air temperature or the times that lakes and rivers freeze? And one could investigate the long-term seasonal geographic changes in diseases (mosquito-borne diseases, corn diseases).

It was pointed out to us that using a simple variable like temperature could yield some fascinating results beyond averages and simple trends. Is there a trend in how many days that the temperature stays above freezing? How about for the number of days when temperatures stay below freezing? How does this relate to precipitation? Clouds?

Also, we were reminded that not all changes we see are due to climate change – we humans are changing our environments in many other ways, such as destroying wilderness areas. And that trends we see in a few years can be quite different from the long-term trend. (That is, one cold winter doesn’t mean that it is getting colder on the long term.)

Through this rich mix of ideas for research topics and data to look at, the students continuously asked about each others’ lives. One of the most fascinating exchanges took place toward the end of the videoconference, when a student from Alaska asked the students in Ushuaia what kind animals they had and what kind of wildlife they ate. The Ushuaia students listed foxes, llamas, beaver, rabbit, birds, and penguins as the animals they had; and said that they ate rabbits, fish, and some beavers (but mostly tourists ate beavers). The beavers were apparently introduced to the region in 1946, and there are no natural enemies, so people are being encouraged to eat them.

A student from Shugaluk closed the discussion section of the conference by putting things in perspective. Yes, skate boarding and dog mushing are interesting, but for the Native peoples of the far North, their very way of life is being threatened. Earlier, a student in Ushuaia said that a glacier that was supplying water to the city was melting and would be gone in a few decades, leading to a shortage of drinking water. As one of the scientists said earlier, like the canary in the coal mine that warned of dangerous gases in a mine– the people in the Polar regions are the first to see the real danger in climate change. We need to remember this as we begin to take steps to try to slow down climate change and its impacts.

NOTES IN CLOSING:

There will be a web chat and web forum April 10-11. The purpose is to help students develop research ideas and projects, and interact with scientists. Links to the chat and forum can be found on the Pole-to-Pole Videoconference page of GLOBE Web site.

Three PowerPoint presentations describe the science and people of Ushuaia. They are also available on the Videoconference page at the above link.

Finally, I recall promising a student from Fairbanks that we would return to the topic of leaves changing color. Since we didn’t follow up on this question, I thought I would include a discussion here. The leaves change color because the chlorophyll, which gives the leaves their green color, disappears in the fall, so that other chemicals in the leaves give them their color. The chlorophyll, of course, is involved in photosynthesis, which provides plants the energy to grow. Different types of trees change different colors. For example, some maple trees turn bright red, while aspen trees turn yellow in the autumn. The weather actually affects how bright the colors are in the fall. In long term, the climate also affects the trees that can stay healthy in a given place. Thus the mix of trees, and hence the colors could change over many decades.

More information is available about leaf color under the Seasons and Phenology Learning Activities, Activity P5 “Investigating Leaf Pigments” in the Earth as a System Chapter of the GLOBE Teachers’ Guide.

The seasons and Biomes project is an effort to engage students in Earth system science studies as a way of learning science. It is a timely project for this fourth International Polar Year with many and intense collaborative research efforts on the physical, biological, and social components and their interactions. Changes in the Polar Regions affect the rest of the world and vice versa, since we are all connected in the earth system. I encourage students to conduct their own inquiry whether collectively as a class or in small groups, or individually. Students can use the many already-established GLOBE measurements in the areas of atmosphere/weather. soils/land cover/biology, hydrology, and plant phenology in their local areas (You can access the protocols by clicking on “For Teachers” on the menu bar at the top of the GLOBE homepage.) Soon there will be new measurement protocols such as fresh-water ice freeze-up and break-up protocols and a frost-tube protocol that will be posted on the GLOBE web site. Students can conduct a study on things that interest them as part of the upcoming GLOBE Student Research campaign.