STEM Professionals Blog - GLOBE International STEM Network

In May 2020, citizen scientist Carmen Mandel met two major milestones: she marked her one-year anniversary of being a GLOBE Observer and she single-handedly expanded the Clouds satellite match data by 36%. Carmen uses GLOBE Observer to record clouds 2-3 times daily every time she gets a notification that a NASA satellite is overhead. She sends her data to GLOBE, but then she records her observation in her own clouds journal. When she receives an email from NASA Langley Research Center matching her observation to satellite data, she adds that to her journal as well. On...

Have you ever wondered what happens after you press submit on your International Virtual Science Symposium (IVSS) report? The GLOBE Implementation Office (GIO) Education team gets to work! Ok, that might be a little misleading because work on the IVSS already started back in August when we started planning for the 2021 IVSS. And while learning about planning webinars and recruiting judges might be something you are interested in; this is not what this blog post will cover. This is the “story” of what happens after teachers upload their students’ projects and press the big blue SUBMIT...

Images taken by Wilson Bentley and property of the Jericho Historical Society.  Did you know that clouds have names? As the title of the GLOBE Elementary book says, clouds do have names. Those names describe the altitude and the appearance of the cloud. Cumulus means pile in Latin, so the name is used to describe low puffy clouds in the sky. Cirrus means locks of hair, and is used to describe those thin wispy clouds found high up in the sky. Some people think that nimbus is a type of cloud, but it is not. It is an affix, or a word that works as a prefix or a suffix. The affix nimbus...

Lectures, lessons, and learning opportunities of all kinds are available online these days… luckily, air quality investigations can be, too! Publically available sources of air quality data, which can be accessed any time and anywhere, can be used in conjunction with or in lieu of the GLOBE Aerosols Protocol for students and teachers participating in the US Air Quality Student Research Campaign. This blog post will introduce a website which can be used to conduct air quality investigations with a ground-based instrument, called the PurpleAir. The PurpleAir is a small, commercially...

Lectures, lessons, and learning opportunities of all kinds are available online these days… luckily, air quality investigations can be, too! Publically available sources of air quality data, which can be accessed any time and anywhere, can be used in conjunction with or in lieu of the GLOBE Aerosols Protocol for students and teachers participating in the US Air Quality Student Research Campaign. This blog post will introduce a website called AerosolWatch, an online access point for satellite-based observations of aerosols, and factors that affect air quality (such as smoke and dust). ...

It snowed at my house in Michigan last week, the first week of December 2020. I love snow and I really like to see how snow affects the surface temperature. Between 60 and 80 mm of snow was on the ground. I took surface temperature observations as part of the Urban Heat Island Student Research Campaign. I wanted to show what you could do by yourself at your house if you have an infrared thermometer. My two sites are my backyard which is grass and the gravel driveway in the front of our house. The backyard has a line of Black Spruce trees just south of where I am standing in the picture....

Scientists are wondering what is happening over Antarctica and where are the noctilucent clouds. Noctilucent clouds or polar mesospheric clouds are the highest occurring cloud types (form about 50 miles or 80 Km above the Earth's surface). They form in the Mesosphere and are thin clouds made up of ice crystals that form from left over fine dust from meteors. Because they are so high up in the sky, you see them when the sun is low or almost nighttime. The form during the summer months over the north and south poles. That is when it is coldest that high up in the sky (in the...

Even with the pandemic, participation the campaign has been good. Although the number of schools participating and the total number of observations was down from last year, it was still a nice number of each. So far this fall (Northern Hemisphere) spring (Southern Hemisphere) there have been over 3,500 observations from 135 sites (70 schools) across the world. Please see the list below. There are a number of schools in Saudi Arabia with over 100 observations. We also have observations from Brazil and an area of India where there are six new schools taking part in the urban heat island...

Santa Fe Indian School Café Scientifique presents Marilé Colón Robles, a NASA scientists to share how you can become a citizen scientist and help NASA Learn how to do cloud observations with: Marilé Colón Robles, Project Scientist for NASA Globe Clouds CLICK HERE TO REGISTER Café Description: Marilé Colón Robles, Project Scientist for NASA GLOBE Clouds Science Systems and Applications, Inc. will be presenting information about cloud and aerosol data that NASA uses and how you as a citizen scientist can help in the collection of this data. Please register to the event using your school...

septiembre/octubre/noviembre 2020 Nuevos recursos disponibles Gracias a nuestra comunidad de nubes, el reto comunitario de nubes 2020 fue un gran éxito al mostrar cómo la ciencia es mejor juntos. Recibimos excelentes fotografías y obras de artes de los participantes, algunas de las cuales se destacaron en el video de agradecimiento. Si no pudistes participar del reto o quieres seguir trabajando en él, visita la página de la guía para familias de nubes GLOBE para obtener los recursos. Encontrarás vídeos sobre la ciencias de nubes (inglés) y el reto para Familias sobre...