Recently I was out walking on an unseasonably warm sunny day. In Washington, D.C., we have been having a mild winter so far this year. Bulbs are poking up in my yard. Seeing the evergreen magnolia and leafless oak trees near my house got me wondering if we will have early budburst. But I know that the weather could turn freezing cold and slow everything down. I hope GLOBE students are already observing buds on native trees near their schools.

Through GLOBE, I have learned about the relationship between weather and plants, so instead of just wishing for more data in the future, I wanted to know what GLOBE students have found in past years in their phenology measurements.

GLOBE students have been collecting budburst data for three years. Some also have been collecting clonal and common lilac data, and green-up and green-down data for grasses, shrubs and trees for one or two years. More phenology protocols are under development and will be available soon.

I decided that it's time to take a closer look at the data. Being an atmospheric scientist, I was curious to see what patterns, if any, I could find in the precipitation, temperature and budburst data. The Phenology Learning Activity for the Budburst Protocol provided a good way to proceed. With the help of my assistant, Becky, what I found is really interesting! I encourage you to do something similar to what I will show you.

• Looking for Budburst Data I
• Looking for Budburst Data II
• Looking for Atmosphere Data
• Saving a Table of Data in a Graph as a Text File
• Calculating GDS for 1999
• Calculating Moisture Availability I
• Calculating Moisture Availability II
• Conclusions