Atmospheric Scientists Encourage World’s Youth to Explore and Learn
The unique talents and interests of an atmospheric scientist at Colorado State University inspired students in Punjab, India, to not only study clouds from a scientific perspective, but to also create artistic images to express their views of cloud formations.
Following in the footsteps of Dr. Graeme Stephens, a University Distinguished Professor, the high school students painted images of clouds and nature on canvas, images they proudly displayed at their public school in Jalandhar. The students in turn received postcards and bookmarks displaying a print copy of Stephens’s beautiful paintings of clouds that hang on the walls at CSU’s Department of Atmospheric Science.
Stephens is principal investigator on a multimillion-dollar NASA satellite project that allows CSU and JPL scientists to see inside clouds as they’ve never seen before. The CloudSat satellite collects unique information about clouds and precipitation, forging new connections between observations and modeling studies of the detailed cloud processes, precipitation processes, and the global climate system.
The budding artists and possible future scientists attend one of eight select schools in Punjab that were chosen to participate in the CloudSat Educational Network (CEN). The CEN schools in India are a mix of private schools that are performing well in the areas of math, science and technology, as well as government schools that have limited resources and need extra support to encourage students to stay in school.
Teachers at CEN public schools say they are especially concerned about retaining girls in school past 10th grade because many of the parents struggle to buy books, uniforms and supplies for their children, and traditionally have not placed value on educating their daughters. The CloudSat Educational Network is changing this perception.
“I visited all eight schools in January 2007 and again in July 2008, and saw a remarkable difference in the participation by high school girls,” says Nandini McClurg, a GLOBE/CloudSat trainer. “The girls that were involved in GLOBE and CloudSat activities had taken on a leadership role in their schools and in their communities, and their math and science scores had gone up.”
McClurg says the most noteworthy experience was at a school in Jalandhar that is located in a very low socioeconomic neighborhood. “While traditionally these girls would have been asked by their families to terminate their education by the 10th grade, these girls had been allowed to continue schooling into 11th and 12th grade. And because they are working with the NASA CloudSat program, these girls can now write research papers that may help them get scholarships for college.”
Dr. Matt Rogers, a research scientist on the CloudSat team and one of Stephens’s former students, has been communicating his excitement about scientific exploration to students and teachers in countries such as Estonia, New Zealand, Thailand, Croatia, Mexico and India for several years. Rogers also visits schools in the U.S., educating students and teachers on clouds and training them to take measurements and collect data that is then used by atmospheric scientists to verify computer models on global precipitation.
“Since CloudSat sees the entire planet every 16 days and orbits every 90 minutes, it makes sense to have schools elsewhere observing the clouds and reporting the information back to us,” says Rogers. “We picked the most active and enthusiastic global schools and trained them on special protocols beyond temperature, humidity and cloud cover, including cloud type and variability.” The students make observations at the same time that the satellite flies over their schools, and Rogers compares the schools’ data to the data generated by CloudSat at CSU’s Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere (CIRA).
“We ship each school a digital camera, tripod and curved mirrors, and they take pictures at different quadrants of the sky so they have a visual record of the clouds they see, and then we can verify their data with what they reported.”
As part of CloudSat’s educational mission, students have the opportunity to attend a research conference in their home countries. At a recent conference in New Delhi, the CloudSat schools took 1st, 2nd and 3rd places in the student competition. The first place winner made a poster on cloud formation based on CloudSat research. “They are studying things normally not taught until graduate school, such as thermodynamics,” says Rogers.
The CloudSat Education Network involves 16 countries with participating schools. In partnership with GLOBE (Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment), CEN provides scientific experiences to students who normally would miss out on these opportunities. GLOBE is a program for primary and secondary students worldwide where students, teachers, and scientists collaborate to study and research the dynamics of the Earth’s climate system and the environment.
Today, there are 2000 schools involving more than 1800 teachers who work with students from all over India to contribute scientific measurements to the GLOBE database. Through CloudSat, NASA, and GLOBE, students and teachers around the world are learning the science of clouds.
“I think the NASA CloudNet program is great because I can’t think of any other way to bring real science projects that the students can do themselves into the classroom,” says Rogers. “You have to have these observations to test your algorithms, and this is something that students can do. I can’t think of any other mission where students can be so directly involved in research.”
For more information, please visit the CEN website http://cloudsat.atmos.colostate.edu/education, and GLOBE www.globe.gov.