The Urban Heat Island Effect Campaign in October was the best start to the campaign that GLOBE has ever had. 89 schools entered surface temperature data. Some schools like Huntington High School in West Virginia entered a lot of observations. Thanks Mr. Sharpe. A list of the number of observations each school took are listed below. Now that so many observations have been taken, students can do research using the data. There are lots of research questions that students can ask and then answer with this data. The students in my Weather and Climate class are looking at various questions related to the urban heat island effect.
You can see a wrap-up video I made for the UHIE Campaign here, https://youtu.be/S3lXnBTNhp0
Here are some reminders. Please be sure that the students put in local time if that is what they are using or universal time if that is what they are using. Both should be put in as a 24 hour clock. One of the most common mistakes in the data base is students putting a time of 2:00 for 2 pm local time when they should put in 14 local time.
Also, please try to have your students take observations of 2 sites with different cover types. I like to have the students observe grass and then a paved area like concrete or asphalt. This way, the students can see the difference right away.
You can see that there were clusters of observations. There were a concentration of schools in the eastern United States, Croatia, the Middle East and Southeastern Asia.
Here are some close-ups of those regions so you can see the schools involved.
I've been asked by a NASA official to look at how snow affects and is affected by the Urban Heat Island Effect. This looks like a good year to do that study in the United States. There is much more snow that at this time last year. There are few things to remember when taking snow observations with your surface temperature observations. Please take a snow depth observation with each of your surface temperature observations. You should record it in millimeters. If there is less than 10 mm of snow on the ground, you should report a T for Trace.
Why is snow so interesting? Well, it changes the albedo of the surface. During the day, snow reflects sunlight. At night, snow insulates the ground so that the air temperature can get much lower. Thermal radiation is emitted to space cooling the surface.
Happy GLOBE observing.
Dr. C
