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

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

Not only are Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa on the Island of Hawaii, but the “big Island” also has more petroglyphs than the other Hawaiian islands, and some spectacular waterfalls. Petroglyphs are images carved in stone. The age of these petroglyphs is not known, but experts believe the stick-figure petroglyphs are among the oldest.

The sulfur fumes that Gage was describing probably come from one of the volcanoes on the island. Based on measurements, water vapor is the most common gas coming out of volcanoes, with carbon dioxide second, and sulfur dioxide third. Also released are hydrogen, carbon monoxide, and hydrogen sulfide, and other gases. Both sulfur dioxide and hydrogen sulfide have strong smells and irritate the respiratory tract. Sulfur dioxide also irritates the eyes and skin, and sustained exposure to high concentrations of hydrogen sulfide and cause illness. One or both of these are probably the “sulfur fumes” in the blog, so it’s not surprising that the students changed their lunch plans.

Day 6 - 16 October 2007

Madison - 13
SNI participant

We hiked out to the petroglyphs, made up to 1,000 years ago. They were carved into the pahoehoe that resulted from the lava flowing uphill. It is believed that the carvings signify family. We later went to Akaka Falls. It is 450 feet (137 m) tall, and very thin. It’s in a rainforest.

Connor
SNI participant

The symbols called petroglyphs have many meanings, there were pictures of stick figure people were most likely just that; people. Little dots were supposedly representing a baby born, and that they put the umbilical cords underneath them. There were tons of other symbols, but they are kind of hard to name.

Gage - 13
SNI participant

We went to a place where there were petroglyphs carved into the lava, it was pretty cool. Then we had to move our lunch place because there was a ton of sulfur fumes in the place we were supposed go, so we had lunch in a parking lot. Tomorrow we fly back to Honolulu on Oahu again.

3 December 2007

December certainly came in with a bang in the United States. A major winter storm moved from California to Colorado to the Great Lakes to the East Coast. It brought snow, sleet, rain, freezing rain and strong winds for a large part of the country. There was some crazy weather at my house. Saturday night it snow about 4 cm (1.5 inches). Then there was about 0.5 cm of ice that fell as freezing rain and sleet. Luckily the electricity did not go out which is a typical occurrence in an ice storm. On Sunday, the warm winds started to blow out of the south and the temperature shot up to 13° C (55.4° F). Now, it is cold with very high winds. It is expected to stay cold for the rest of the week in Toledo, Ohio.

Some of the snow totals around the United States from the storm are impressive. Parts of Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan received between 30 and 60 cm of snow. This storm produced half a meter of snow for the ski resorts in the Rocky Mountains. As I write this, the one storm is exiting the United States via Maine and a new storm is coming in off of the Pacific Ocean into Washington, Oregon and California. Lake effect snow around the Great Lakes is the big story tonight. Many of the schools in the snow belt areas southeast of the lakes will be getting significant snow over the next few days. Also, just to give you all a potential heads up, right now the weather forecast models are forecasting another major winter storm for next Monday and Tuesday that is forecast to take a very similar track to the one we had this weekend. We shall see what happens.

We are up to 26 schools participating in the field campaign. The more schools that participate, the more comparisons that can be made. I know there will be more students from different schools participating.

Seasons and Biomes Snow Tube

Over the weekend I got my frost tube put into the ground. You may be thinking, “What is a frost tube?” Well, it is a tube filled with water that you put into the ground. Each week we will pull it out of the ground and look to see the depth that the ground is frozen to. The frost tube is a new GLOBE protocol is part of the Seasons and Biomes Project that GLOBE is undertaking in collaboration with the University of Alaska, Fairbanks.

I had the opportunity to go to Fairbanks, Alaska twice in the last year. It was a great experience. I met people from all over the world and made a lot of good friends. I wanted to share this with you because I think it is funny. Janna, a nice teacher from Greenland, said that I was a southern boy. I have never been called a southern boy before in my life. I grew up near Buffalo, New York and usually people from Buffalo are considered northerners. I guess it all depends on your perspective. Buffalo is quite a bit south of Janna’s house in Greenland.

Kenji Yoshikawa is a research scientist who specializes in studying permafrost. He showed the meeting attendees how to make the frost tube. I think it will be very interesting to take these new observations. I bet I am the only person in my neighborhood with a frost tube. I finally got mine in the ground Sunday. The surface froze last week but melted again this weekend. I am so glad I got my frost tube in the ground because the temperatures are going to remain at or below freezing the rest of the week.

There are many things that affect the depth that the frost will occur in the ground. The main thing is the outdoor air temperature. What else could affect the depth of frost in the ground? I’m sure you can come up with lots of things.

Figure 1. My sons Robby (9) and Timmy (4) showing off our frost tube. Note that the frost tube is made up of a clear tube filled with water (and sand) inside a white PCV tube.

Figure 2. I dug a hole in the ground about 105 cm (42 inches) deep. I used a post hole digger. All I can say is “Oh, my aching back.” I found it interesting that the bottom of the hole started to fill in with water. The water table is very close to the surface at my house. We live in an old lake bed of Lake Erie.

Figure 3. Here is my frost tube in the ground with the dirt filled in around it. I can pull the inner tube out once a week throughout the winter to see how deep the ground freezes to. I have the frost tube sticking out of the ground so I can find it once it snows. Note, the frost tube goes down into the ground 105 cm. The part above the ground does not count in the calculation of 105 cm.

We are all set to go. We are ready for the Arctic air to take over.

Figure 4. Map of the USA, to locate the states mentioned in the blog.

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

That’s all for now.

Dr. C

29 November 2007

The first week of the GLOBE Surface Temperature field campaign is coming to a close. It is great to see so many schools represented that have participated in previous years. I have been in email contact with many teachers who are getting their students involved.

Taking a quick look at the data on the GLOBE Web site, I’ve noticed that, for the most part, the data are being entered without problems. One of the typical errors that students in the United States make is they put the temperature into the GLOBE Web site as degrees Fahrenheit instead of degrees Celsius. No one has done that yet for this field campaign.

The highest temperature so far has been in Waynesboro, Pennsylvania of 14.6° C. The lowest temperature has been at –5.7° C at Whitehall High School in Whitehall, Michigan. I suspect that the lowest temperature will be a lot lower if some of the teachers and students in Alaska start entering data. They have participated in the past but there aren’t any data on the GLOBE Web site from them yet.

Incorrect Universal Time on Some Observations

I have noticed, though, that a couple of the observations have the incorrect universal time. Please be careful when you or your students enter the data that you use universal time. If you need help with converting your time to universal time, see the UT/UTC conversion page.

Major Winter Storm in the United States

The big story is the major winter storm that is forecast to move out of Colorado on Friday up towards the Great Lakes and East Coast of the United States over the weekend. The big question is, “Who will get the snow?” Winter storm watches are posted all the way from New Mexico to Minnesota to Illinois. In Toledo, Ohio where I am, the storm may bring only rain. Bummer!

On a related note, Friday morning (tomorrow) I will be going to Akron, Ohio, to be part of a program to honor GLOBE students. Four students from Roswell Kent Middle School will be personally honored with a commendation by the state of Ohio during a school assembly. The four eighth graders — Julia Moyer, Elizabeth Price, Ashley Falls, Katelyn Jefferys and teacher Steven Frantz are one of five groups chosen to represent the United States at the GLOBE Learning Expedition to be held at in South Africa in June, 2008. These students participated in last year’s surface temperature field campaign. Their research project that they entered into the competition looked at the effect of land cover on the surface temperatures of six different schools.

Map of the USA, to locate the states mentioned in the blog.

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

Have a good weekend everyone.

Dr. C