Blog - Brian Andrew Campbell

Dramatic images show El Niño beginning to rescue California from its drought! As you may know, the state of California has been facing drought conditions for some time now. Over the last few months, the El Niño phenomenon has brought much needed precipitation to the drought-stricken state. Click HERE to read the full story and see the evidential images.

The SMAP Mission satellite launched on 31-January 2015 from the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.  Check out the video below to watch it take off!  

How do SMAP Scientists Use GLOBE Data (Part II)? Data Analysis and Blog by Dr. Erika Podest, SMAP Scientist In order to start using GLOBE soil moisture data we need at least 15 measurements collected on days when SMAP flew overhead. The Varazdin School is an example of such and the chart below is a comparison between their data and SMAP soil moisture at 36 km2 spatial resolution. Figure 2:...

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...

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...

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...

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...