Historic Participation Data (2003-2013)

In addition to GLOBE's automated participation data system, which began in 2012, the program provides historical participation data from 2003-2013. The data in the table below shows GLOBE participation metrics prior to the current collection system. The metrics tracked for historical data slightly differ from the current collection methodology and it is not recommended to directly compare these data with GLOBE's current tracking system.
 

How to Interpret GLOBE Historical Data

The data below details the number of schools, educators, and students participating in K-12 classroom settings. These participants both received GLOBE training and participated in data collection during 2003-2011.

The GLOBE Program can confidently report the number of educators trained by the GLOBE community, however, GLOBE can not determine the degree of student participation. This uncertainty is due to many unknown variables, for example, whether each GLOBE educator is instructing a single classroom of students or is responsible for multiple classrooms. (The number of participating students was estimated by assuming that educators work with one classroom of students, using 25 students as the average classroom size.) This approach results in a conservative estimate of student participation in the GLOBE Program.

Active Participant Definitions

In this previous data system, the number of educators and K-12 schools were based on active measurement reporting from a GLOBE school, and the number of counts for these two variables were based on active schools. To be classified as an active school, educators needed to regularly report and upload GLOBE protocol observations.

Active measurements in the previous GLOBE data system differed from the current system and included parameters like site definition and metadata, such as the height of an obstacle near an instrument shelter. Additionally, many automated weather station measurements included in GLOBE’s current system are not included in the historical data counts. 
 

Table Outliers

The green cells in the table below indicate a switch on 30 June 2012 to the current GLOBE database and new methodologies of metric gathering. The blue cells for 2013 in the table indicate the migration of schools and educators to the new GLOBE database. During this transition, GLOBE counted every educator that signed up for training to ensure information retention in the new system. In December of 2012 there was a large data transfer which  accounts for the large increase in numbers in 2013.