GPM

El Nino weather observations

2016-01-20T08:48:17Z

The current El Nino is predicted to cause many changing weather patterns around the world. Some places will receive more precipitation that they usually do, and some places will receive less. Some places will be warmer than usual, and other places will be cooler. Are you noticing any weather changes in your location that may be due to the El Nino conditions?

RE: How are you using your precipitation data?

2015-04-10T17:59:41Z

Thanks, Kristen!

We have an automated station attached to the school. I never thought of comparing the data. We'll add this facet as soon as we return from Spring Break!

RE: How are you using your precipitation data?

2015-04-08T18:02:13Z

This isn't completely related to getting a long-term climate record, but I was curious to compare a GLOBE-style manual rain gauge with a electronic one, so I purchased an inexpensive one ($25 on Amazon) to put next to the regular one.

compared to

I haven't done a lot of analysis of the numbers yet, and I'm not a classroom teacher any more so this wasn't done with students, but it would be another way to collect and analyze data, and it's similar to what some ground validation scientists do frequently. (Including Dr. Ali Tokay, who works here at Goddard Space Flight Center, and who submitted a blog for the campaign, although he doesn't go into a great amount of detail about the comparisons he does in that particular entry.)

How are you using your precipitation data?

2015-04-07T15:02:37Z

Hello from New Jersey!
I'm curious as to how you all are using your rain gauge precipitation data. I'd like to continue rain gauge measurements with my classes, year after year, and begin to create our own "climate data" for our town. Obviously, we won't have the normal 30 years of data, but there still might be some interesting patterns students can notice from year to year. After Spring Break, we will begin to take routine pH measurements, and see if there is any correlation between seasons and precip pH, and/or specific events (forest fires, weather inversions, world volcanic eruptions, etc.) and pH. I am open to any other ideas, as well!
Thanks,
Vicky

RE: What kind of precipitation are you getting this month?

2015-02-06T20:35:23Z

We have been getting lots of snow in Northeast Pennsylvania!!! Choconut Valley Elementary is located in Friendsville, PA which is just south of Binghamton, NY. There is another storm on the way for the weekend. The kids have enjoyed seeing how much liquid is left when the snow inside the large rain gauge melts. They have started making friendly bets amongst each other as to how much there will be. Our custodians have been wonderful about shoveling out around our rain gauge so we can continue to access it - although I'm sure the kids would rather climb through the mountains of snow piled up around it to get to it.

View recordings of the first two webinars - register for the third

2015-02-05T22:46:40Z

Recordings of the teacher introduction to the field campaign can be watched or downloaded (note: large video file), and the presentation slides can be found here.

Recordings of the student kick-off webinars with special guest Dr. Mark Kulie of the University of Wisconsin and member of the Precipitation Measurement Missions Science Team, are also now available.
- Session 1 (17:32, introduction, "For Good Measure" video and Q&A)
- Session 2 (7:16, introduction only, no Q&A)
- Session 3 (17:33, introduction and Q&A).

Registration is open for the next teacher webinar, "Ground Validation and Satellite Measurement", taking place on Wednesday, February 18. Guest presenters will be Dr. Walter Peterson of NASA's Wallops Flight Facility and GPM's Ground Validation Science Manager and Dr. Stephen Nesbitt of the University of Illinois and member of the GPM Ground Validation Team. For more details see the webinars page or go directly to the registration form.

Testable Questions for Students

2015-01-21T17:46:06Z

We would like to begin to develop a set of "testable questions" which students would be able to answer using the precipitation data that is being collected from different GLOBE schools. Please give us some ideas here, and we will work on developing supporting materials and resources for some of the testable questions. Examples of a "testable question" would include "Is there a heat island effect in GLOBE school locations that are located in large cities?"

What kind of precipitation are you getting this month?

2015-01-16T16:51:59Z

I thought it would be fun to see the types of precipitation that different locations are experiencing in the month of January. Here is the greater Washington, D.C. region, we have been having the usual mix of rain, sleet, ice, and some snow. We haven't had much, but there have been a few delayed openings and even a snow day or two for local schools!

Press release and webinar registration

2015-02-05T20:05:23Z

As we prepare to get underway with the field campaign, NASA has issued a press release about the campaign, which you can see here on the main NASA webpage, or here on the GPM mission page.

Also, registration is open for the first webinar (taking place January 21st), an overview of the GPM-GLOBE Student Field Campaign and a chance to learn a bit about the mission and ask any questions. Please visit the webinars page for more details or go directly to the registration page to sign up.

Let's get ready to collect some data!

real-world applications for measuring precipitation

2014-11-14T15:29:02Z

Our GPM video producer has created a very nice short video entitled, "Show Me the Water" which you can see and download at http://pmm.nasa.gov/education/videos/show-me-water. This video could be used to demonstrate to your students that freshwater is a relatively rare resource, when compared to all of Earth's water, and it also goes into details about the usage of our freshwater resources.

International GPM Mission Data Goes Public

2014-09-04T17:12:45Z

The most accurate and comprehensive collection of rain, snowfall and other types of precipitation data ever assembled now is available to the public. This new resource for climate studies, weather forecasting, and other applications is based on observations by the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Core Observatory, a joint mission of NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), with contributions from a constellation of international partner satellites.

Read more and see a video describing a data visualization of a storm over the eastern U.S. observe on March 17, 2014 (still image below):
http://www.nasa.gov/press/2014/september/international-global-precipitation-measurement-mission-data-goes-public/

Image credit: NASA/JAXA

Friends of GPM August 21st newsletter

2014-08-25T15:03:39Z

Greetings! Here is the August 21st Friends of GPM newsletter. In this newsletter, I included a lot of information and educational resource links that are related to hurricanes.

GPM sees the first hurricane in the Atlantic!

2014-08-11T18:40:51Z

Latest GPM mission update

2014-08-05T18:37:09Z

The Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Core Observatory flew over Hurricane Arthur five times between July 1 and July 5, 2014. Arthur is the first tropical cyclone of the 2014 Atlantic hurricane season. GPM is a joint mission between NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. The Core Observatory was launched Feb. 27 from Japan and began its prime mission on May 29, just in time for the hurricane season.

The five GPM passes over Arthur are the first time a precipitation-measuring satellite has been able to follow a hurricane through its full life cycle with high-resolution measurements of rain and ice. In the July 3 image, Arthur was just off the coast of South Carolina. GPM data showed that the hurricane was asymmetrical, with spiral arms, called rain bands, on the eastern side of the storm but not on the western side.

Arthur was born as the first 2014 Atlantic tropical depression on June 30. It strengthened into a tropical storm on July 1 and reached maximum intensity as a Category 2 hurricane on July 4. The storm moved up the U.S. East Coast and made landfall on July 3 at 11:15 p.m. EDT over the Shackleford Banks between Cape Lookout and Beaufort, North Carolina, before swinging northeast over the ocean toward Greenland, where it became an extra-tropical storm on July 5.

“With these new observations we are able to see fine scale structures of precipitation to about 1,000 feet vertically and 3 miles horizontally. This allows us to measure precipitation regionally and to improve weather forecasting models,” said Gail Skofronick-Jackson, GPM project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt Maryland.

The GPM Core Observatory’s observations of storms like Arthur will also help scientists decipher some of the thorniest questions about hurricanes, such as how and why they intensify. Hurricane intensity is one of the most difficult aspects to predict and is an area of active research that GPM's observations will contribute to, said NASA Goddard hurricane researcher Scott Braun.

The spacecraft carries two instruments that show the location and intensity of the rain, which defines a crucial part of the storm structure. The GPM Microwave Imager sees through the tops of clouds to observe how much and where precipitation occurs, and the Dual-frequency Precipitation Radar observes precise details of precipitation in three dimensions.

With the added capability and higher resolution on the new instruments, "hurricane features pop out more. They're sharper, there's more clarity to the structures," said Braun. "Being able to see the structures more clearly may allow for better determination of the structure of the eye wall and rainbands, thereby providing clues about the likelihood of a storm intensifying or weakening.”

For forecasters, GPM's radiometer and radar data are part of the toolbox of satellite data that they use to monitor tropical cyclones and hurricanes. This toolbox includes data from other low Earth orbit and geostationary satellites.

"The whole idea here is to use these tools to understand the initial genesis of the tropical cyclone, then to monitor its location, eye structure and intensity as it evolves, and to use that along with our numerical model forecast to generate a five- to seven-day forecast every six hours," said Jeff Hawkins, head of the Satellite Meteorological Applications Section for the Naval Research Laboratory in Monterey, California. His group is an early adopter of GPM data and monitors near-real time tropical cyclones worldwide. They distribute satellite products generated from multiple satellites' data to operational and research users, including the Navy and Air Force's Joint Typhoon Warning Center in Hawaii and the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Florida.

The addition of GPM data to the current suite of satellite data is timely. Its predecessor precipitation satellite, the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission, is in the17th year of its operation. GPM's new high-resolution microwave imager data and the unique radar data ensure that forecasters and modelers won't have a gap in coverage.

All GPM data products will be released to the public by Sept. 2, 2014. Current and future data sets are available to registered users from NASA Goddard's Precipitation Processing Center website at: http://pps.gsfc.nasa.gov/

Welcome Aboard!

2014-07-31T16:28:38Z

Greetings to everyone who has joined us so far! We are working hard to get our fall GPM-GLOBE Field Campaign organized and ready to go. Just as a preview of coming attractions- we want to get as many GLOBE Schools as possible to participate in a field campaign during the first week of October, November, and December. Each school will collect precipitation data, which will be compared and contrasted to the data that GPM collected for the same location and time period by one of our ground validation science team members. We will have weekly blog posts from our Education Team and Science Team members, and will have some webinar opportunities as well. So jump on board, invite other GLOBE Schools to join us, and feel free to let me know if you have any questions at this point in time. Over the next few weeks, we will have a lot more information and supporting educational resources for students, teachers, and scientists!

Latest mission updates

2014-07-01T13:34:57Z

After sucessfully launching on February 27, 2014, the GPM Core Observatory passed checkout and was turned over to the engineers in Mission Operations at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center on May 29 (http://go.nasa.gov/1qNe4ty).

The latest news is that a schedule for the release of data has been announced:

The GPM Core Observatory satellite was successfully launched on February 27th, 2014. Data from the GPM Microwave Imager (GMI) and Dual-frequency Precipitation Radar (DPR) have the following release schedule. All data are freely available through the NASA's Precipitation Processing System at http://pps.gsfc.nasa.gov

June 16th – GMI Level 1 Brightness Temperature data have been released. This includes GMI instrument swath data.

July 14th – GMI Level 2 Precipitation Rate data will be released. This includes precipitation rates estimated using the Goddard Profiling algorithm (GPROF14) and are available as swath data.

Early September – DPR Level 2 precipitation rate data will be released via PPS and JAXA. This includes three-dimensional swath data from the DPR Ka and Ku-band radars.

Mid-September - The DPR-GMI Level 2 combined product will be released

December 2014 – NASA’s Level 3 Integrated Multi-Satellite Retrievals for GPM (IMERG) will be released with all available data. This gridded product will have a resolution of 0.1 degrees and updated every 30 minutes from 60⁰N-60⁰S.

(http://go.nasa.gov/1qNeKiu)