GLOBE News
Join the ENSO Data Entry Challenge – 22 April through 22 July!
The GLOBE Program invites you to join the ENSO (El Niño Southern Oscillation) Data Entry Challenge. The goal of the challenge, which began on 22 April and runs through 22 July, is to involve students in the GLOBE ENSO Student Research Campaign.
El Niño and La Niña are the warm and cool phases of a recurring climate pattern across the tropical Pacific—the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (or “ENSO” for short). The pattern can shift back and forth irregularly every two to seven years, and each phase triggers predictable disruptions of temperature, precipitation, and winds. ENSO is one of the most important climate phenomena on Earth due to its ability to change the global atmospheric circulation, which in turn, influences temperature and precipitation across the globe. We also focus on ENSO because we can often predict its arrival many seasons in advance of its strongest impacts on weather and climate.
Join GLOBE in contributing to our understanding of the science of ENSO. All data for the ENSO Campaign will be reported to the GLOBE Data Entry portal as usual; however, the ENSO campaign page will provide an additional venue for analysis and collaboration.
How can you take part in the ENSO Data Entry Challenge?
It’s easy – just use the suite of GLOBE suite of protocols ...
- Precipitation
- Air Temperature (Max/Min)
- Surface Temperature
- Soil Temperature
- SMAP Soil Moisture
- Biometry - Canopy and Ground Cover
… to observe changes from climate averages and to correlate temperature and precipitation measurements with observations of phenology changes. Local analyses will be compared across the participating schools and examined in the broader spatial context afforded by satellite observations.
El Niño and La Niña are important climatic phenomenon that can have impacts on the climate globally causing flooding and droughts as well as causing changes in seasonal weather. Considering the importance of this issue, the GLOBE ENSO Campaign has been formulated to engage students in determining where and how much El Niño affects local places and to put students in contact with their local environment.
The data collected and entered into our system during the ENSO Data Entry Campaign will help us understand how these natural cycles impact us – and how we may impact them.
type: globe-newsNews origin: GLOBE Implementation Office