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How do SMAP Scientists Use GLOBE Data (Part I)? Data Analysis and Blog by Dr. Erika Podest, SMAP Scientist SMAP has been collecting soil moisture measurements since mid-April 2015, which are freely available, online through the National Snow and Ice Data Archive Center (NSIDC): https://nsidc.org/data/smap Of utmost importance is to have an assessment of the quality of the data, which is why there is a SMAP calibration/validation group. Its purpose is to determine the accuracy of the measurements and whether there are any biases. In order to calibrate and validate the SMAP...

While your students continue to collect data for the El Niño Field Campaign, think about how you can have your students interpret the data they are collecting and expand upon its use. From science fair projects to student research projects to El Niño (ENSO) Tales & Stories (see below for more details), your students can come up with great ways to use the data they are collecting to tell a story of how El Niño is affecting local environments to having global impacts. Below is the El Niño Field Campaign Student Scaffold. This is the step-by-step process envisioned by the El Niño Team...

Fenómeno El Niño: 8 niños mueren en Piura por altas temperaturas El Niño : 8 children die in Peru by high temperatures It seems the effects of the El Niño phenomena has cause the death of eight children due to heat stroke.  Click HERE to see the original story, in Spanish. Below is the entire article translated into English. _________________ The high temperatures in northern Peru due to El Niño have killed at least eight children as a result of heat stroke, the regional director of Health of the Piura region, Jesus Juarez said. Speaking to Canal N. Juarez said...

Check out this diagram from the NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information, showing some of the interesting anomalies and events for January 2016. If you visit their website , you can look at similar charts for other recent months, or annual summaries such as the one below, for 2015.

Did you know that soil moisture plays a vital role in human health? Those nasty little critters called mosquitoes love warm, wet soil, and can carry extremely dangerous viruses and diseases. We also can use SMAP soil moisture data to assist famine early warning systems. Improved seasonal soil moisture forecasts using SMAP data will directly benefit famine early warning systems particularly in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, where hunger remains a major human health factor and the population harvests its food from rain-fed agriculture in highly monsoonal (seasonal) conditions. In...