Blog - Brian Andrew Campbell

The GLOBE ENSO Student Research Campaign wants to hear how you are collaborating with other GLOBE schools – or how you would like to collaborate in the future. Create a slide and send it in by 13 November so that it can be shared during the upcoming 15 November webinar. What better way to show your students that they are a valuable part of the GLOBE community than by sharing a slide that shows...

A few months ago, scientists and researchers gave La Niña a slim-to-none chance of forming..... BUT..... recent weather and climate models are now saying that La Niña has a 70% chance of taking shape, albeit a weak one. Check out this cool article by NOAA's Climate research group.

Let's talk about collaboration? Collaboration is a way to share your research, measurements, and ideas with others that have similar goals and interests. Collaboration is about much more than just sharing data or sharing techniques, it is about leveraging the expertise of others with your own, and combining them into a "POWERPACK" of results. During our current Phase II of the GLOBE ENSO...

Have you been taking lots of GLOBE data for the El Niño Student Research Campaign? Now that you have all the data, what can you do with it? There are lots of cool ways to make sense of your data by sharing your WATER STORIES via the H2yOu Project and El Niño stories via the Story Maps Project. By analyzing your El Niño protocol data, you can develop stories that will tell the rest of the...

Earlier this summer, scientists predicted about a 75% chance of a La Niña following the El Niño from 2015-2016. But now, a La Niña is most likely not going to happen, with a 40% chance as of September. Last Spring, waters in the Pacific Ocean seemed to be cooling off. This is an indicator of a La Niña weather pattern. Scientists have now noticed that these water temperatures have been leveling...

As you might know, NASA came out with a statement that July 2016 was the hottest month on record, ever! Since the 2015-2016 El Niño event began in October 2015, each month has set a new record for the hottest month on record. Even though we are currently in a period of neutrality, we are on the tails of an El Niño and quite possibly about to enter a La Niña. "Since October 2015, every month...

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...

The NASA SMAP satellite took off for space on January 31, 2015 to study our planet's soil moisture and freeze/thaw state. Once in space, the satellite had to go through a prescribed series of steps to ensure that the spacecraft was functioning and all its instruments and components on-board were working properly. This took several months. In mid-April 2015, NASA starting receiving its first...

There are many application for SMAP soil moisture satellite data. Understanding drought risk is vital to the health of the planet and to the lives of potentially billions of people around the world. Soil moisture strongly affects plant growth and hence agricultural productivity, especially during conditions of water shortage and drought. Currently, there is no global in situ network for soil...

We all know that the SMAP satellite measures soil moisture. But, how does knowing our planet's soil moisture help us in understanding agriculture's reaction to it? SMAP monitors soil moisture and provides critical information for drought early warning. In fact, a deficit in the amount of moisture in the soil defines agricultural drought. SMAP's measurements will come into play because...