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This is the second half to a blog posted on 25 March 2016. To see part one, click here . We are pleased that our guest blogger, Jacob Spivey, is back to share more information about oceans and climate. Jacob also blogs at Weatherbolt .  If part of the ocean has a lower salinity, then it’s going to be less dense and there won’t be as much sinking water there. This can trigger the slowdown of another circulation, the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC (thank goodness scientists abbreviate some of the names that they come up with!). Like the GTC, this is another...

Our swim off the shore of the Antarctic continent was coined as the “polar plunge.”  Plunge is a verb meaning “to jump quickly and energetically.”  I did just that – the quicker I got in, the sooner I could get right back out!  I plunged holding a bucket to collect the day’s water sample from Neko Harbor.  Since I had jumped into the Arctic’s water last June ( read here ), I was confident I could do this.  I knew just what to expect:  frigid water cold enough to feel like a million needles.  Probably overconfident from the excitement, the...

The third and fourth grade students whom I work with at Cedar Grove ES asked me what will happen once the El Nino conditions begin to subside, and I admitted that I really wasn't sure. So, we used the internet and looked it up! We found a website that answered our question!  Discovery News has a great article with videos and graphics at  http://news.discovery.com/earth/weather-extreme-events/will-la-nina-follow-one-of-the-strongest-ever-el-ninos-160410.htm .  This article suggests that this strong El Nino season may be followed by a La Nina event. Like all good...

Dorian Janney, GLOBE Scientist Mentor Blog for El Nino Field Campaign   I have had the pleasure of working with two groups of elementary school students this year as their GLOBE mentor. They attend Cedar Grove Elementary School in Clarksburg, MD. My primary goal was to install an instrument box with a rain gauge and a multi-day thermometer at their school, and to help them collect and report data to GLOBE.  Here they are collecting data:   As we observed the weather patterns, they began to ask what the difference was between weather and climate. I gave...

Water Availability can be defined as "The hydrologic capacity of a water source (surface water body, groundwater, municipal water) to sustain additional water demands after considering other current water uses and water conditions. (GEMI, 2012) The Soil Moisture Active Passive Mission provides information on water availability and environmental stress for estimating plant productivity and potential yield. The availability of direct observations of soil moisture status and the timing and extent of potential frost damage from SMAP enables significant improvements in operational crop...