General

The school location is based on the latitude, longitude, and elevation of your school. Visit your school's page by hovering your mouse over the "Go To" (on the top bar) and selecting your school from the list. On your school's page, verify the location of your school on the Organization Map (further down the page on the right). If your location needs correcting, click on "Manage" (from the upper-right side of the page). Select Organizations from the list. Select the name of your school to edit it's information, click on Edit on the right-side panel, and then select GLOBE Info from the options on the right. Your school latitude, longitude, and elevation can be correctly entered in the fields provided. Be sure to select the "Save" button if you have modified any information.

The GLOBE Science Data Entry application has a listing of your study sites for each organization that you do GLOBE. Use the link labeled "Edit Site" to reach the page that contains your site coordinates and various other protocol information.

In order to enter data, click on the "Enter Data" link on the home page, or go to "GLOBE Data" tab on the homepage, then select "Data Entry" from the menu. If you have not completed a GLOBE training, you will see a message that indicates you are required to complete training before you are allowed to enter data. If you have completed a training, you will be allowed to enter data and visit the GLOBE Science Live Data Entry and Training Data Entry applications. 

There are small errors associated with the elevation determined by GPS satellites; therefore, the GLOBE website executes a correction factor on entered elevations based on GEODESY.

The GPS units assume that Earth is a nice ellipse when, in fact, it has an equatorial bulge and many valleys and mountains. We use a calculation to correct the elevation provided by the GPS unit based on your latitude and longitude. So, for example, even though the GPS unit says 890 meters, a closer value (based on this calculation) is 837.2.

Basically, the way the elevation is computed is by the GPS using particular ellipses to approximate Earth's surface. This is controlled by the datum setting of the GPS unit. For GLOBE GPS measurements, the datum must always be set to WGS-84. The correction factor to "improve" the elevation estimate is based on the GPS using the WGS-84 datum and a more accurate elevation data set.

While the correction factor improves the site elevations overall, individual points can suffer. Sometimes schools near sea level end up with a corrected elevation beneath sea level!

Not all users of the data on the GLOBE website use the elevation data and, if they do, it's mainly for looking at big changes in elevation (e.g., sea level vs. mountains), and the corrections won't make that much difference, since all stations in a region will be affected in the same direction.

Scientists who need more refined height estimates can get elevations from independent data sources, as long as the latitude and longitude are reported accurately and with precise degrees (four or five decimal positions).

To find the GLOBE Data Sheets, visit the GLOBE Teacher's Guide Search Tool In the search filter locate the Protocol Specific Documents -> select the check box for Data Sheets and click the Apply Filter button. Select one of the PDF documents from the search results -> the data sheet will open, at this point you can choose to print it.

The GLOBE Community developed a program called DataTool to facilitate the upload of environmental measurements or extensive datasets into the GLOBE database. Instead of form-based data entry using the  GLOBE Homepage, existing data can easily be imported as a CSV file from any spreadsheet (e.g. Excel, Numbers, etc.) and then edited, visualized and uploaded. The prerequisite for this is that the respective measurement sites have already been created at GLOBE and a valid user ID exists. More information about this tool is available at the following URL: http://globe.uni-koeln.de/17467.html?&L=1