Vol. 5, No. 3

May/June/July/August 1997

Welcome to the (usually!) bimonthly newsletter of the Schools of the Pacific Rainfall Climate Experiment (SPaRCE). SPaRCE is a cooperative field experiment involving local meteorological services, elementary, middle, and high school, college, and trade school students from Pacific islands, atolls, and the U.S. Additional information concerning the SPaRCE program can be obtained on the World Wide Web at:

http://www.evac.ou.edu/sparce/

On the Road Again...

Whether you live in the Northern Hemisphere or the Southern Hemisphere, most people tend to think of summer as a more relaxed time of year, when many typically take a holiday from work and school to travel or just kick back and watch the clouds go by. However, the past several months have certainly been busy ones for all of the SPaRCE staff in Oklahoma (which is why you are getting a 4-month newsletter!). We've been involved in everything from developing better automated weather systems, to science and education conferences and teacher workshops around the Pacific, to field work on the Big Island of Hawaii. What follows is a group effort to let you know what we've been up to. This newsletter is the combined effort of the SPaRCE staff and associates: Susan Postawko, Andy Wood, Shawn Ellis, Barbara Gibson, John Ensworth, Scott Greene, Brad McGavock, Karla Sterling, and Josh Wurman.

We are so excited about the work that SPaRCE students are doing that we want to be sure as many people as possible know about it. To this end, we've spent much of our time in the past few months at conferences and workshops, waving the SPaRCE banner.

Mark, Scott, and I started our summer travels by attending the International Association of Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences and International Association for the Physical Sciences of the Oceans Joint Assembly in Melbourne, Australia. While at the conference we were finally able to meet Dr. Matthias Tomczak of Flinders University who has been organizing a SPaRCE-like program for schools in Australia. It was a great meeting, and we hope to continue our collaborations with Flinders University.

After the conference, we took a quick trip up to the Australian capital of Canberra, where we had meetings with scientists from the National Resource Information Center (NRIC) and from CSIRO. As a result of these meetings, it looks like Mark and Scott may be teaching a 2 week course in statistical techniques in Canberra next year.

From Australia it was off to the Pacific Science Intercongress, held at the University of the South Pacific in Suva, Fiji. This was our first time in Fiji, and it was spectacular! The SPaRCE program had an exhibit booth at the conference, and if the number of brochures, newsletter, and stickers that we gave away is any indication, then I'd say we were a big success! As a side trip, we met with Mr. Neville Koop, director of the Cyclone Warning System Upgrade project. Look for a lead article from him in an upcoming newsletter.

Meantime, back in Oklahoma, several people were working hard to improve the SPaRCE automated weather stations. John Ensworth and Alia Long both spent many long hours testing the new rain gauges, and working on ways in which we can retro-fit the stations at Malapoa College (Vanuatu) and Papaaroa College (Rarotonga). It's slow work, but we're getting there.

The SPaRCE program had a significant presence in Majuro (Republic of the Marshall Islands). Susan and Shawn attended this year's Annual Pacific Educators Conference, which was held at Marshall Islands High School. After last year, we decided that one 1 hour workshop just wasn't enough time, so we gave 2 workshops this year. In addition to giving the workshops on the SPaRCE program, there was also a SPaRCE display set up in the Exhibitor's Hall. While at the conference we got to see many old friends, and hopefully made some new friends!

While Susan and Shawn were at the conference, Mark and Josh were working with the Majuro Weather Service, who kindly agreed to test two of our new rain gauges. We should be getting data from these gauges very soon.

After the Pacific Educators Conference, we had the privilege once again to participate in a Hawaii Sea Grant workshop. This year, the Pathfinder workshop was held in Pohnpei on the College of Micronesia campus, and had about 35 teachers participate. Organized by Elizabeth Kumabe of the Hawaii Sea Grant Extension Program, FrannieCoopersmith of Maui Community College, and Pamela Legdesog of PREL, the workshop was a full two weeks of information and activities.

While at the College of Micronesia campus, we visited with Mr. Harvey Segal, his son Gordon, and others, and hopefully helped them work out the details so they can set up a SPaRCE automated weather station on the campus with a computer display in the PEACESAT office.

The highlight of the trip to Pohnpei was surely our visit with Miklos out at Ponape Agricultural & Trade School. In addition to setting up a new automated rain gauge out at PATS, we managed to time our visit just right and got to attend Miklos' 86th birthday party!

Last, but not least, the SPaRCE program had a presence at the Conference on Climate Change and Sea Level Rise which was held in Noumea, New Caledonia. The focus of the meeting was the islands of the Pacific. This was probably the most informative and important conference of the summer for us.

As usual, our trip to the Pacific was one of the most rewarding experiences of the year. We never fail to be impressed by the enthusiasm of the teachers we meet, and hope they will all feel free to contact the SPaRCE program if there is something we can help them with.

I also want to extend a special thanks to Barbara, Andy, Brad, Shawn, and John for all of their hard work these past few month when many students were enjoying a much-deserved break from school. They all worked long, hard hours. Without them, it would be impossible to run this program.

Hello y'all! I hope that everyone is doing well. I wanted to talk to you briefly about the work I have done for SPaRCE this summer and the different places that it has taken me.

During the early months of summer, I spent much of my time working with the SPaRCE homepage. A goal of mine is to add every school possible in our program to the SPaRCE metadata archive by the end of this year. After many long hours this summer, I am well on my way to this goal. The rest of my time was spent making preparations for the many trips that I took this summer.

The first of these trips was to the Second Annual GLOBE International Workshop in Arlie, Virginia. This conference gave me a chance to discuss some research I did for GLOBE to the teachers, country coordinators, and administrators of the program. My talk was part of a day-long session for different scientists to present their work. I learned a lot about the program at this conference and even agreed to give a talk at a training workshop later in the summer.

After the GLOBE conference, I attended the Second International Conference on Geosciences Education in Hilo, Hawaii. It was my first ever trip to a Pacific island and I had a great time. The conference gave me a good opportunity to learn more about the methods educators use to teach people about the earth system. I saw many great sites on the Big Island, too. My experiences in Hawaii have enlightened me to many new concepts in education.

My last trip of the summer was to a GLOBE trainer workshop in Murfreesboro, Tennessee (the workshop I agreed to go to while in Virginia). I gave a lecture on cloud identification and making measurements of temperature and rainfall. The participants at the workshop were all enthusiastic to learn, which made my job very easy and rewarding. I spent most of my free time conversing with the participants and learning more about their work and thinking of ways that I could improve our program. I hope to implement ideas from all of these trip in the coming months.

Since returning from my trips, I have been busy tying up some loose ends and getting ready for a busy autumn here in Oklahoma. There are many goals all of us at SPaRCE want to accomplish. In the coming months you will be hearing about many of them. I look forward to hearing from all of our participants. Keep up the good work everyone!

SPaRCE vs. the Volcano

Barbara Gibson

Aloha! This summer was full of interesting travels for many of the people involved with the SPaRCE program. The Second GeoSciEd Conference was held in Hilo, Hawai'i the last week of July. Susan, Andy, Brad, and I attended the conference and presented a poster about the SPaRCE program and how we integrate technology, such as the automated weather stations, into the program. Many of the posters presented were interesting and we all came up with new ideas which we hopefully will be able to implement over the next year. During the time we all were on the Big Island, we also decided to hike the 4 miles to see the eruption along the coast near Kilauea Volcano. We began our hike in drizzling rain, but alas, a tropical depression that was coming through rained our trip out.

After the conference was over, Susan went on to the Marshall Islands for the Pacific Educators Conference, and Andy went back to the mainland to prepare a talk for the GLOBE program. Meanwhile, Brad and I were beginning our own adventures on the Big Island. We began doing field work for my Ph.D. thesis. Kilauea Volcano has been almost continuously erupting for the past 14 years, releasing sulphur dioxide into the air which eventually is converted into acid deposition, including acid rainfall. The gases also form a volcanic smog, or vog as the local Hawaiian residents call it, and many claim it adversely affects their health. My thesis is investigating the possible impact that the vog and acid deposition may have on environmental variables, such as soils and vegetation. The data that was collected from the field work will be incorporated into a geographical information database (GIS) to determine what, if any, environmental impacts to the soil and vegetation are occurring.

Brad and I spent about 2 weeks collecting soil samples and collecting notes about the vegetation present at various locations around the island. Most of the data collected was in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, and included rain forest and "desert" areas. We both enjoyed the uniqueness of each landscape and saw many of the wonderful sights around Hawaii Island. Many people were also very helpful as they provided various information concerning the possible effects of the vog. Needless to say, the experience was a very educational and memorable one for both of us!

During the last days of the trip, Shawn joined us on his way back to Oklahoma and he and I decided to try another trip out to the region where Kilauea's eruption was active on the coast. (Brad decided to stay at the hotel to recuperate from doing the field work, i.e. the cold showers and sleeping on the hard ground while we were camping!) It was a very long hike but well worth the trip!!

Pele was very generous as we were able to view many breakouts on the land and there was quite a bit of lava coming from the tubes into the oceans! We also were able to see the bright glow due to the eruption at Pu'u O'o miles away. It was a terrific conclusion to a wonderful summer in the Pacific!

As the plane descended into the Honolulu airport, I finally came to realize how real my excitement had become. The Hawaiian shoreline and waters were more beautiful than I had ever imagined, but this was probably due to the fact that I had never seen the ocean until that moment. I knew that this trip would be a lifetime experience!

Working for the SPARCE program has always been a rewarding opportunity but I never thought that I would get to walk on the islands of Majuro and Pohnpei in addition to Hawaii. It would be impossible for me to describe the entire trip in this article, so I decided to talk about the experiences which meant most to me.

Having the chance to attend and participate in the Pacific Educators Conference in Majuro and the Pathfinders Workshop in Pohnpei was definitely one of the highlights of the trip. I really enjoyed speaking about the SPARCE program as well as explaining and sharing meteorological information that the teachers would use to educate the young women and men of the Pacific Islands. It was also equally enjoyable to attend other workshops and learn about programs and activities involving science education. Through these conferences, it became clear to me that by working together with other service providers is one of the best ways to shape the future of the Pacific.

The cultural aspect of the SPARCE trip was also fascinating to me. The bright, colorful clothes that were worn seemed to fit the personality of the Pacific people in that these people were warm-hearted, very friendly, and generous in lending a helping hand. At a cultural presentation in Majuro that included several different island entities, I watched in amazement at some of the dances that were performed. It was also there where I learned about the traditional sakau ceremony courtesy of the people of Pohnpei, and I must admit that I took part in drinking sakau which I found to be an unusual experience to say the least!

After leaving Pohnpei I went back to stay on the big island of Hawaii for two days. It was a thrilling end to the trip as I was treated to one of nature's most awesome sights. Seeing the lava flows and their entrance into the ocean was probably one of the most exciting experiences of my life! The scene was breathtaking as new land was being created before my eyes. However, at times it was so hot that my breath was almost taken from me and the tread on my shoes was melted!

Since I have been back in Oklahoma not a day has passed that I haven't thought about something concerning my Pacific adventure. It will always be something that I will cherish and be forever thankful to Mark and Susan for giving me such a wonderful opportunity.

UPDATE ON THE SPaRCE WORLD WIDE WEB HOME PAGE

During the past few years, the World Wide Web and the Internet have grown dramatically. The Internet has become a major medium of communication, education, and entertainment for many people. Since the fall of 1995, SPaRCE has maintained a home page (http://www.evac.ou.edu/sparce/) on the Internet. This page has provided both information about our research goals and about the people who participate in our program. We are currently making improvements to the SPaRCE home page. We hope that our changes will provide more information and resources on-line to more people.

Over the past few months, we have been working hard to update the SPaRCE web page. We have worked particularly hard in adding more information about the schools in our program. We currently have pictures, maps, poetry, stories, etc., from twenty-one different participants available on-line. We hope to add more participants to our web page in the near future. It has been a great help to us that many people participating in SPaRCE have sent us so much information. We would like to take this moment to thank each of you for doing so. We also want to encourage anyone who wants to send more information about their school, island or nation to do so. The more background material you provide us, the more we can tell people about our many participants.

In addition to adding more information about our participants, we are also planning on providing future versions of the SPaRCE newsletter on-line. The most recent version of the newsletter, March/April 1997, is the first issue currently available on our web site. By posting our newsletter on-line, we will allow people to learn more about our program more quickly.

There are further enhancements planned or being discussed for the SPaRCE web page. In the coming months, we hope to have versions of the SPaRCE workbooks available through our home page. (We are currently revising all our workbooks to include more activities, experiments, etc.) These on-line workbooks would include interactive sections, in addition to the material already present. One goal of these new sections is to quiz students' knowledge about weather, climate, and meteorological instrument siting, among other things. The web site would provide instantaneous feedback and also allow students to mail us questions they have about the workbooks or interesting weather phenomena in their area. We may also incorporate parts of the different SPaRCE videos into the on-line workbooks. It is our hope that this multimedia presentation could further enhance students' understanding of their environment.

All of these updates are nice for people with access to the newest web browsers. We realize that many SPaRCE schools either have no Internet access or may have computers with limited graphics capabilities. We want to provide on-line information for many of those participants, too. Therefore, we are planning on creating a "text only" version of the SPaRCE web page which can be viewed by any browser. Such a page will allow schools with limited computer capabilities to access many of our on-line resources.

A lot of these changes are still in the formative stages and will be implemented over the coming months. We would be more than happy to hear any input you might have about our web page. Your comments would go a long way to help us create a better home page, and, hopefully, to help us better serve our participants.

We hope that these updates to the SPaRCE web site will help our participants and researchers learn more about the weather and climate of the Pacific Basin. The Internet has helped a significant percentage of the world's population become more informed about the world around them. We also hope more people will learn about and become involved in our program through the SPaRCE home page.

BREAKING WEB NEWS!

Check out the web page by Kahakai Elementary School teachers!
http://www.k12.hi.us/~kahakai/tech/pals.intro.html

Hi everybody, and welcome to the third installment of "Who we are" at SPaRCE. My name is Scott Greene, and I work as a research scientist in the Oklahoma Climatological Survey. Like most of the others here at SPaRCE, my interest in the weather goes back to when I was a kid. My particular fascination has always been with rainfall. When a rainstorm would hit my hometown when I was little, I used to just sit and listen to the raindrops hit the roof and windows and wonder what caused clouds to form and the water to fall. When I went to college, I studied meteorology, but began to focus on the interactions of climate and the environment.

My trip to SPaRCE was something of an adventure. I worked with Mark and Susan at the University of Hawaii almost 10 years ago, and then went to the University of Delaware to persue a doctorate in Climatology. After I graduated, I went to work for the Oklahoma Climate Survey, and rejoined the SPaRCE program in September, 1995. My specific research focuses upon the use of climate models in environmental analysis. This includes using the data that SPaRCE gets from the schools to examine the effectiveness of satellite-based rainfall algorithms in the Equatorial Western Pacific. It also includes a range of topics, from examination of the

climatic impacts upon Anopheles (the ones that carry malaria) mosquitoes in Kenya, to determination of the meteorological conditions associated with elevated human mortality during Summer heat waves.

When I'm not working, I enjoy playing with my dogs and gardening in my backyard. When it rains, and I'm forced to come inside, I still sit and listen to the raindrops.

How to Join the SPaRCE Program

The Schools of the Pacific Rainfall Climate Experiment (SPaRCE) is a cooperative field project involving students, teachers, and weather office personnel from various Pacific island and atoll nations, as well as from the U.S. The program is headquartered at the University of Oklahoma.

If you would like to be part of our newsletter mailing list, or if your school would like to be involved with the SPaRCE program, please contact us at the address below. All we ask from you is motivation and a willingness to learn about weather and climate.

SPaRCE Headquarters
EVAC
University of Oklahoma
710 Asp Avenue, Ste. 8
Norman, OK 73069
USA
phone: (405) 447-8412
fax: (405) 447-8455
E-mail: sparce@hoth.ou.edu

PEACESAT Radio Sessions

Many of you may have noticed that we have not had any PEACESAT sessions in the past several months. This has been due to travel schedules and confusion over scheduling with the PEACESAT office in Honolulu. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

Typically, once per month SPaRCE participants are invited to join us for discussion over the PEACESAT radio communications network. These sessions allow participants to ask questions about the program, general weather and climate questions, or just talk with other SPaRCE participants.

You need not be at your local PEACESAT office to participate, but can be patched in to the session via telephone. To determine if you have a local PEACESAT station, or if your local operator does not know about the rain gauges sessions, you may contact the main PEACESAT office in Honolulu, Hawai'i for more information.

PEACESAT
University of Hawai'i at Manoa
Old Engineering Quad., Bldg. 31
Honolulu, HI 96822 USA
Telephone: (808) 956-8848
Fax: (808) 956-2512

For the remainder of 1997 the scheduled radio sessions are:

October 16

November 19

DATES & TIMES are from 1:30-2:30 pm Hawaiian Standard Time. Please remember to adjust for your local time.

Sponsors of the SPaRCE Program

SPaRCE is sponsored by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the National Science Foundation, The U.S. Department of Energy TWP/ARM program, PEACSESAT Hawai'i, the GLOBE program, the Oklahoma Space Grant Consortium, and the University of Oklahoma College of Geosciences.

EL NINO UPDATE

The following pages are taken from the Pacific ENSO Application Center newsletter. Many thanks to Mr. Alan Hilton for his permission to use these materials: newsletter