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Team Members: Florence Fetterer, Hannah Wilcox, Mark Serreze, Jeff Weber, Dorothea Ivanova, Marian Grogan
Meeting Room: 216 (Howbert), Worner Center
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Pre-meeting Sharing Space
Please introduce yourself to your team members. Give a brief description of your role in facilitating the use of data in education. You can also post links, files, or images.
[Mark Serreze will arrive in time for Wednesday evening activities but will depart at the end of the day Friday. Jeff Weber will arrive Thursday, may miss the first Thursday session. Hannah Wilcox will arrive Wednesday in time for the field trip. Florence Fetterer will arrive in time for Wednesday evening activities.]
Add Pre-meeting notes here:
Hello NSIDC team,
I want to introduce myself as the curriculum developer on your team. I
am relatively new to TERC (fall 2008) and the Access Data team but have been a curriculum writer elsewhere, middle grades science teacher, as well as business consultant and banker (but that is another story...). I'm delighted to be joining your team and look forward to meeting and working with you all in Colorado and following.
I will familiarize myself with the IDV tool in advance of the workshop and may be calling you, Hannah and Jeff in particular, as I learn more about it.
Marian Grogan
Hi all, I'm Florence Fetterer, the data 'expert' on the team (and facilitator). I started as a physical oceanographer but thanks to the Cold War (another long story) learned about remote sensing of sea ice and moved to Boulder. I manage a team that focuses on data rescue and data from operational communities (like the Navy). I work at NSIDC with Mark, who is the National Snow and Ice Data Center's new Director, and with Hannah and Jeff on a project to provide access to all sorts of Arctic data as part of the Arctic Observing Network. That project is CADIS (http://www.aoncadis.org/)
I'm Mark Serreze, the scientist on the team. I'm a climate scientist, with particular interests in the polar regions and their connection to the larger global climate system. I'm especially fond of ice, snow as well as very cold water. My research makes use of data from stations around the world, satellite remote sensing, and weather and climate models.
Hi Team,
Please add the datasets we are hoping to use, that way I can see how they play in the IDV, or give me time to write a translator.
The IDV can be downloaded at:
http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/downloads/idv/index.jsp
..use 2.6u2, unless we get another release out, looking for one near beginning of June.
Jeff Weber (Data Provider, Tools Specialist)
Greetings from Arizona!
Sorry for the late introduction, but we were at the very, very end of the semester in our university. My name is Dorothea Ivanova and I'm a faculty in the Department of Meteorology at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. My area is: ice cloud parameterizations for GCMs, cirrus ice microphysics, ice water content (IWC)/Ice water path – temperature relationships, snow-growth models, and climate variability. Background: NASA-Goddard, Greenbelt, MD; Desert Research Institute – Reno, NV – Division of Atmospheric Sciences; and NOAA-NESDIS, Satellite oceanography and climatology division, Camp Springs, MD.
I'm looking forward to working with all of you!
Dorothea Ivanova
----------------------------
Florence's notes after meeting with Mark, Jeff, Hannah and talking with Oliver on Monday 18 May. Note that as we get all this sorted out by trying to actually do the analysis we propose, Jeff will put the relevant files and links on a content management site that NCAR has called RAMADA. This should make it easier for us to keep track of all the data. However I'll fill out the Data Templates using their native sources not RAMADA) >>
Our science question: Is permafrost temperature changing?
Main concept: Heat transfer - if air gets warmer, soil will too.
Complicating issues, ancillary concepts: Seasonality, lag in transfer from air to soil at depth, effect of snow (why doesn't snow make the soil colder?), meaning of trends and correlations (linear regression and statistics), data issues like limited access to data, effect of gaps in data, and need for long data records.
Impacts: What are the implications of rising permafrost temperatures? (We can refer people to the permafrost site at NSIDC, won't do much else unless asked to).
We'll look at the period 1950 through present. We have permafrost temperature data for 37 stations. Some records start as early as the 1880s. This is the "Oliver" data set. It goes to 2000. It is freely available (from Oliver) but is not yet published on the NSIDC site or in CADIS. It is for Russia only (no Alaska). For later data, we have the "Vlad" data set. That has (we think) the same boreholes, covers (we think) 2000-2005, and is available from CADIS.
We'll look at the period 1950 to present because that is the period for which we also have good surface temperature records. We'll use GISS temperature fields, at least to start.
May also make use of a snow cover data set from NSIDC, and NCEP reanalysis pressure fields.
Story outline basics (subject to change):
Are permafrost temps changing?
* Exploratory data analysis using existing tools - online plotting of anomalies and trends in surface temperature from GISS site , of surface pressure from NOAA ESRL/PSD visualization site, and of permafrost and snow cover data using IDV. (We need to think up a script for this. )
* Do an annual average of permafrost temp (at several depths) to reduce the impact of seasonality (using Excel, probably)
* Linear regression of several stations data (using Excel). Possibly aggregate them all?
* Do same of GISS temp data (using Excel, probably)
* Regress surface temp against soil temp for 1950-2000, at a selection of soil temp depths (using Excel, probably)
** Should show higher correlation at surface
** Possibly do lagged correlations for depths
* Perhaps use the snow cover data set to remove snow covered station data from consideration. Should see correlation get higher for surface soil temps.
* Add the later data from Vlad (this may be time consuming - see below) to see what has happened over the last 5 years.
Here are the basics of these data sets along with some notes for our meetings today (5/18):
"Oliver" soil temperature station data from the permafrost regions of Russia:
The station data (36 sites) are all in ascii format and the filenames are TMD2_rqc.* The "TMD2" is just an internal moniker we use for the type of soil temperature observations they are, and "rqc" means they've been quality controlled.
Each ascii file has a header, indicating the station ID, month, year, and then the depth (in meters) for which the temperatures apply. "-999.0" is the missing data flag. The TMD2 data actually only start at 0.2 m, so the first four columns of actual data (0.02, 0.05, 0.10, and 0.15) are always -999.0. There are lots of other -999s, too, and the spottiness of these data can be another valuable lesson to the students... (Maybe that can be part of the curriculum -- "What do you think are some reasons why we don't have continuous data?")
After the TMD2_rqc is the station ID and I also included an Excel sheet with some metadata, sorted by that station ID. The Excel file provides a region ID, WMO station number (if applicable -- some sites aren't WMO stations and so there's no WMO ID for those), station name, latitude, longitude, and elevation.
The temporal coverage varies but is nominally 1880's to 2000. Frequency is monthly.
Jeff has the data files. He'll put them into Excel and also into netCDF.
I'll ask Tingjun if I can publish these to CADIS (they are not on the NSIDC site. Publishing them there would take months).
"Vlad" soil temperature station data from Russia and Alaska:
http://cdp.ucar.edu/browse/browse.htm?uri=http%3a%2f%2fdataportal.ucar.edu%2fmetadata%2fcadis%2fHydrology_and_Terrestrial_Cryosphere%2fPermafrost_Observatories%2fPermafrost_Observatories.thredds.xml
I don't have time to open all the many Excel files but they look like a mixed bag. For example, in "Network of Permafrost Observatories in North America and Russia" I opened ru_10_0013_08_nsidc.xls. It has daily temps for Vorkuta at 5,10, 15, and 22 meters, daily, 10/10/07 to 9/5/08. ru_10_0013_08_nsidc.xls is also Vorkuta but with daily temps at 3,5,10, and 12.4 m, covering 8/20/08 - 9/5/08. In "Network of Permafrost Observatories in North America and Russia deep boreholes" I opened ru_10_0019_08NSIDC.xls. Again this is for Vorkuta, but the structure of the data is different, only one day of data are there, and there are 20 depths from 5 to 50 meters.
Jeff, since you'll be doing the work to get the data into netCDF and matching it up with the Oliver data, you'll have to be the judge of whether we have time to deal with these data.
GIS temperature data:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/
Note the thumbnails on the right which we can use for plotting in exploratory data analysis.
roll down to
Table Data: Global and Zonal Mean Anomalies dTs
Could use
Zonal-mean annual dTs, 1880-present, updated through most recent complete calendar year (click on it, note 64 N to 90 N column that would probably work for us)
But if we need to pull out the data for the same positions as the Oliver/Vlad stations, I think we'd need one of these, under Gridded Monthly Maps of Temperature Anomaly Data:
1: SBBX.Tsurf1200 (42 MB) surf air temp (1880-present) 1200km smoothing
2: SBBX.Tsurf250 (18 MB) surf air temp (1880-present) 250km smoothing
Or, simply click on the global maps thumbnail (http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/maps/) and set mean period to annual, interval to 1950-2008, leave base period and smoothing radius as defaults, projection polar, "make map", then roll down to "Download data as text, netCDF, ..." From that file we should be able to pull out the positions that correspond to the Oliver station data.
Jeff will get a version of these data into netCDF and Excel.
Snow cover data:
Northern Hemisphere EASE-Grid Weekly Snow Cover and Sea Ice Extent Version 3 product which contains snow cover extent from 3 October 1966 through December 2007 http://nsidc.org/data/nsidc-0046.html
This is in 25 km EASE-Grid. Jeff will look into getting it into netCDF. (Could follow pattern set with an NSIDC Snow Water Equivalent data set, see Mary Jo or Julia if interested).
Surface pressure data:
(Out of time, but can get from
http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/data/getpage.pl)
********* 5/22/09 Teleconference notes ************
People in attendance: Marian, Dorothea, Florence, Mark, Jeff, Hannah
Florence sent the following files in e-mail:
Draft Permafrost Data Sheet (Microsoft Word 96kB May22 09) - Draft of the data sheet for the permafrost data
Permafrost data (Excel 16kB May22 09) - Permafrost data
Permafrost data (Zip Archive 16kB May22 09) - Permafrost data
Draft GISS Temperature Data Sheet (Microsoft Word 93kB May22 09) - Draft of the data sheet for the GISS Temperature data
Draft NSIDC Snow Cover Data Sheet (Microsoft Word 92kB May22 09) - Draft of the data sheet for the NSIDC snow cover data
Marian - Discussed what Dorothea's role on the team is. When the teams get put together they put together people who understand the data, people who are educators, people who understand the tools, people who can write the chapter, and a scientist. She represents the educators so ask the question: How would I use this in my classroom?
Dorothea - Already using IDV in classroom. She's a scientist too.
Jeff - Embry-Riddle's been an IDV user for a long time.
Florence summarized the meeting we had earlier this week.
- Decided to use permafrost data from Vladimir's data in CADIS but it doesn't have a long enough time series.
- Oliver provided us with data for a longer time series.
Jeff - the data is online in Ramadda.
Top level URL for workshop: http://motherlode.ucar.edu/repository/entry/show/Top/Projects/AccessData?entryid=417c0c67-fcd6-479d-9ca7-f7f1c0bd122e
URL for borehole data: http://motherlode.ucar.edu/repository/entry/show/Top/Projects/AccessData/Borehole+Data?entryid=c773c689-da0e-4cde-a436-22de3a332bd9
Jeff - He's finding data that starts at 1950, 1966 in Oliver's data but not from 1850.
Mark - There ARE a few that go back to 1850.
Jeff - writing an IDV plugin to ingest Oliver's data automatically.
Florence - Doesn't think we'll have time to work through the script (human instruction set) to view the data in IDV before the workshop.
Jeff - Teams haven't had the script in place beforehand in the past, they do that at the workshop.
Mark commented about the storyline.
- Asking the question: "Have permafrost temperatures risen. If so, why?"
- Have come up with way to simplify analysis by using annual averages.
- Should find permafrost temperatures have risen as air temperature has risen, but the relationship is muddy.
- Mudding factors include:
- snow cover - The permafrost temp. is linked to air temp. variability and change but snow is an insulator. We don't have snow data to show this well.
- lag in temp. response between air temp. and soil temp.
- data issues - Data gaps. Some go back to 1880's, some go back to 1960's. Real world data is not continuous.
Jeff - is there a database with soil or vegetation cover?
Mark - Yes, but that may be getting too complicated. Temp. data is site specific bore holes so local conditions have big impact on what you're seeing. If you try to relate it to a grid scale in a climate model (WRF) that you may not get a lot of correlation.
Marian - Is it of note that most of data is from Russia, not Alaska?
Mark - Tingjun's data was in collaboration with Russian scientists. Russians have been collecting it longer than in Alaska. Borehole data was one of the things they were good at collecting.
Florence - Vladimir's data is from Alaska and elsewhere, but is that too complicated?
Jeff - We don't have translators for all of Vlad's data so if we will be using all of it, let him know.
Marian- Are there any issues we need to address before we come together as a group?
Mark - Can't think of anything.
Jeff - We (Jeff, Florence, Hannah) have been working on CADIS together for a while and Jeff has worked with Mark in the past. Worked together (1997) on fresh water discharge. This should make workshop go more smoothly.
Florence sent around link to soil temp.:
http://nsidc.org/noaa/search/indicators/soil_ru.html
with mean annual soil temp. plot. This is what Florence envisions students may create.
Dorothea - How can I help you? What are our goals AFTER the workshop?
Jeff - Goal of the workshop is to come up with a storyline and chapter resources for the cirriculum developer. After the workshop be available for clarification.
Marian - Chapters are used in workshops for teachers. Dorothea should look at the chapters and keep us on track during workshop.
Florence - What extent should we bring in ancillary datasets? For sure permafrost and surface temps.
Mark - Depends upon how far into analysis you want to go?
Dorothea - Her laptop is a Linux laptop so is that a problem?
Jeff - No, there will be lots of other laptops and machines.
Session 1 - Thursday Morning
Meet your team members. Learn about the data, tools, and expertise represented on your team. Review DataSheet(s) and explore data and tools.Team members meet each other and share their experiences and viewpoints on using data in education. Review and discuss DataSheet(s) begun by the data representative(s) for your team. Explore datasets and tools and consider how the expertise on the team can complement them. If you haven't already done so, narrow down the range of datasets the team is considering using to a manageable number.
Add Session 1 Notes here:
The earth's permafrost is very important in the earth's system.
- There is a lot of CO2 in frozen soil.
- As we warm up the climate, we melt the permafrost, releasing the CO2
- Are soil temp.s in high northern lands warming? If so, why?
- Why? Steve Ackerman leaves why out of his teaching. Do we need to leave out why? No, that's the compelling part. We'll just do simple analysis.
- What is permafrost
Perennially frozen soil.
- Is permafrost below snow?
Soil, sediment, or rock that remains at or below 1 degrees C for two or more years. Ground that's below the freezing point for two years. Doesn't mean it's water, it could be rock, wedges, ice. The "active layer" is the layer that goes through seasonal melt and freeze. Is that considered permafrost? No, that's above permafrost.
- The temp. data from Russia goes from 1 - 3 meters down. More accurate to ask "has soil warmed" because the measurements are in the active layer. Dataset chosen in permafrost area to simplify things.
- Where else would you find permafrost?
Siberia, Canada, Alaska, Greenland, up on Pike's Peak.
- Issue is that there are 950 Gt of carbon locked up, carbon content today is about 730 Gt.
-When permafrost thaws, it's an anaerobic process so it creates methane and methane is bigger problematic greenhouse gas. Who knows if the carbon profile of arctic is changing? This is a current research topic.
- Is it that this has been going on and we haven't been tracking it?
Only in the last 10 years have researches been looking at this. They've known about the potential problem for a long time. If you lose sea ice, it warms land as well because the atmosphere spreads out the land.
- If there's snow on the ground, why wouldn't soil be colder? Question from Oliver.
- Google flaming permafrost video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oa3M4ou3kvw).
Tingjun Zhang - NSIDC permafrost pro.
- Chart showing changes in temp. in Russia. Warming from .2 m to 3 m down. Active layer is getting thicker thus telling you permafrost is warming up as well.
- Carbon tipping point - if you start to warm up the Arctic, plants can grow better. If they're growing, they're sequestering carbon so ground becomes sink for carbon. At some point it stops becoming sink and becomes producer. As critters get more active, they and roots decompose and bacteria is creating CO2. Rotting biomass is a huge source of CO2 in atmosphere.
- There are many different types of permafrost. Alot of the concern is about the frozen biomass (peat bogs) melting and releasing CO2.
- Why does this not include southern hemisphere?
There is little land in southern hemisphere. There's too little to be of much importance.
- On NSIDC website, there is a whole page on frozen ground: http://nsidc.org/cryosphere/, http://nsidc.org/cryosphere/frozenground Resource for an "educated general public". "State of the Cryosphere" is for perhaps college level students.
Dorothea's work...
Research's ice in the atmosphere. Microphysics, snow growth modeling, ice crystal growth. Works at Embrey-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, AZ. We have NASA astronauts come for training. majority of students are pilots. Teach meteorology for pilots and for other students.
Worked before at NASA-Goddard, and in Ocean and Climatology.
Marian's work...
At TERC for about 6 months. Other work has to do with NSF funded program creating Energy Conservation badge system for Girl Scouts.
Before that, Education Development Center. Doing math, science development. Have been middle school teacher and bank manager.
Jeff...
First degree in finance. Had a bike business in South America.
Came back and got Atmospheric Science degree in Colorado.
Data we'll be using are in NetCDF which is a binary file format like GRIB and BUFFR. NetCDF has many versions. Data sheets are in AccessData worksheet, but we have it in a readme file with citation.
- Should we chuck snow data?
YES. Snow has important temp. modification effects because it's a good insulator. If you have deep snow cover, it will keep heat in the ground, changing permafrost temp. Good snow depth data is hard to get. Snow coverage can be easily measured from satellite, but you can't get good gridded field of snow depth. We're hoping to get good correlation from soil temp. to air temp. and not use snow. If we want to bring snow extent in, we could do soil temp. vs. air temp. and then remove points with snow coverage. Is there enough science with just soil temp. vs. air temp.?
- Do we have preliminary results showing a correlation?
There are a number of studies that have been done showing a correlation. Svetlana Tudenova(?) did a study of 5 permafrost areas. Trend show increase soil and air temp. increases since 1960s in all 5 areas.
- Important point - Relationship between the two doesn't necessarily mean a direct correlation.
- What is the level to target?
High school to undergraduate students. Undergraduate and advanced high school students?
- Borehole data is CSV (comma separated value) data so in order to use it in IDV, we just need to define the headers and fields in the data, then we can export it in NetCDF. Jeff already has plugin for the borehole data so it can be posted for the world. This air data grid is over this borehole and we can draw probes to see relationships. We can setup data in IDV bundles which start in a prescribed form, but it's dynamic so teacher's can bring in other datasets and do other analysis.
- GISS data: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/ Do soil and air temp. for 1960 - 2000. To get total change, get trend line and divide by number of months. GISS plots show most warming in higher latitudes (Russia).
- Analysis is between point data and gridded data. Challenge is in physical representation of data. Need to get some sort of relative scale. Take a region (Eastern Siberia) and aggregate temp. over that region and use that to compare to borehole point data in a specific region.
- How big is a grid section?
About 250 km. Big.
- How is it collected?
There are actually collected with either automated or manual weather stations. ASOS - Automatic Surface Observation System, AWOS - Automatic Weather Observation System, AROS - Automatic Road Observation System
Session 2 - Thursday Afternoon
Brainstorm data-use storylinesBrainstorm a set of possible storylines for valid investigations of the dataset(s) you have selected. Come up with at least one compelling scenario that will give users a reason to work through the technological steps necessary to perform an analysis of the data.
The Activity Outline Guide provides an outline for the minimum information needed for the team's activity outline.
Add session 2 Notes here:
Start of story...
Pieter (or Ivan, Vlad, Sasha) lives in Chersky, Russia. He is the latest in a long line of people who have been measuring temperatures of the permafrost. Pieter's dad and Pieter's grandfather both measured permafrost after his grandfather walked down the street and saw cracks in the buildings and it looked like they were sinking and collapsing. They dug a hole and found that the permafrost was thawing. "We didn't use to see this." "It seemed it was a lot colder when I was young."
OR...
The little boy goes to look for his dog (Uri, Misha, Laika). He finds the dog digging to hide a bone in a field he's never buried things in before. The little boy goes back to his father and asks why. The father tells the boy that that field has always been frozen.
The permafrost is thawing. Is it really getting warmer?
Pieter gets concerned and Googles (with brand new PCs in Chersky donated by a special grant) thawing permafrost. The PCs have been installed in a building that has been effected and is crumbling so they need to solve the problem fast. They find data online that is collected from Russia but they can't get to it. They contact Dr. Oliver at NSIDC and Oliver helps them analyze the data and look at other datasets. The children learn more about this problem including the feedback loop that is causing more and more CO2 being released into the atmosphere. They realize they could be sitting on a time bomb. How can we help our Russian friends?
After the students get the data and analyze the data, they write a grant proposal to the Bill Gates Foundation. Bill Gates reviews the proposal and decides this is a terribly important issue that MUST be funded.
OR...
Exchange student goes to Maryland and is hosted by a family whose father works at NASA-Goddard. The exchange student tells the father about the troubles in his village.
(Perhaps set it all in Russia)
A child in Alaska has a cousin (Pieter) that lives in Russia whom he e-mails. The child in Alaska sees a YouTube video about a village near him where methane from in the permafrost was lit on fire. The child shows this to his village elders. The elders tell the child that this is because the permafrost has been warming. The elders could talk about birds fledge earlier, the rivers used to stay iced longer.
The child e-mails his cousin about what he's found out. Pieter e-mails back the story of his family and their measurements.
Teaching Notes:
- Learning Goals
Discover the long term changes in permafrost temps.
Discover the long term changes in air temps.
Visualize difference between temps.
Using cutting edge technology in the classroom with real data.
Discover analysis must be conducted within limitations of data.
What are possibilities of big steps?
- Go to Ramadda and click on IDV bundle (view in IDV).
- We can do the same kind of thing as "Whither Arctic Sea Ice" step-by-step instruction.
- We can use IDV for air temp. data and do Excel instructions for those without IDV.
- Use NCEP NAR data instead of GISS data because NCEP data is in GRIB format.
Sessions 3 and 4 - Friday Morning
Select a data-use scenario and perform a proof-of-concept checkUse the complementary expertise on the team to check that the task you are envisioning can actually be completed in an educational setting. Identify a target grade level for the activity and choose a working title.
Please limit the scope of the activity to tasks that can be accomplished by accessing existing data and tools. Discuss and agree upon the content limits of the activity as well. Consider that the major goal of these activities is to develop user familiarity with the data and tools.
Add Session 3 and 4 Notes here:
Talk about Roberta's talk...
- Is there a hypothesis that we can suggest?
Air temps. are the reason permafrost is thawing.
After discussion with elders, have suggestion of hypothesis and suggest students come up with hypothesis of their own.
In the beginning of "Is Greenland Melting", there is a discussion of the mystery under Instructional Strategies.
Instructional Strategies...
- Why is there permafrost in Russia?
- What is permafrost?
- Where is permafrost found?
- Why is permafrost important?
- What are the implications of permafrost thawing?
- Why do scientists say permafrost thaws, not melts?
- What happens if permafrost thaws?
-- Impacts on infrastructure.
-- Impacts on ecosystems
-- Impacts on climate
-- Impacts on stratospheric methane (enemy of ozone). The methane released from the permafrost rises quickly into the stratosphere and reacts with the ozone.
CH4 + O3 + high energy photons (hv) = 2O2 + H2O + CH2
The problem is the ozone is broken apart, letting in UVA, UVB which cause problems with humans and mammals (cataracts, skin cancer)
Data...
On RAMADDA, choose a directory, right click, and click "View", "Map" to see where all the data sites are. If levels are missing, it doesn't show up in the display.
Package with color ramp for level values and blue marble map package.
- What about temporal aspect?
It starts with earliest time step.
x in file extension (.xidv) means it's an IDV bundle. Educator can export the time series as a quick time movie if they are bandwidth challenged.
- What grid is the probe interpolation using (what resolution)?
It is configurable and can be turned off. It might be better to not allow interpolation between points.
The data probe chart changes with the placement of the probe and follows along with the time steps. We can use the whole time series and just show portion of time series (1950 - 2000). If we have datasets until 2000, we can have students make hypotheses as to what has happened since 2000.
- Can we get a recent dataset that will be updated regularily?
There is a problem getting current permafrost data as the data is held closely by investigators and is only updated randomly by investigators. The data is also in varied formats so it makes it hard to be able to automatically ingest future data. Since this dataset is only up to 2000, we can use datasets that are current but are in different, but near, boreholes. We can assume students will be using this chapter 3 - 5 years out so we need data that is going to continue to be updated into the future. Temp. data is not a problem so we could have students use current temp. data and infer that permafrost data is changing in the same kind of way.
- Do we turn the problem around?
We have concerns about what will happen when permafrost thaws. Over the permafrost parts of the northern hemisphere, is it warming? Look at model projections. Look at surface air temp. Are we seeing permafrost thawing now? We know regionally it is. We go into the data and see that it's hard to answer that question since the scientists don't continuously collect this data.
If we can do a robust job with the data we have, we should be okay as it's hard to predict in any of the chapters what data will be available in 3 - 5 years.
- Can you show putting trend line on temps. in chart?
Might be valuable to create a trend line for each borehole and show just what the trend is doing (rising or falling).
IDV will be really good to get a visual of all the borehole sites with a temp. overlay. Students and educators will be able to move the probe between sites. For qualitative analysis, IDV is great. For quantitative (is rising permafrost correlated with rising temp. If so, what is that correlation?), use Excel.
Cherskiy is on the river Kolyma. It's about 10 miles from the coast. Being so close to the coast, it would be influenced by the lack of sea ice. They have a bridge there that's been damaged by permafrost thaw.
Revised plan...
Use IDV for exploratory analysis (data probes, gridded schemes, differencing). Use Excel for trends, statistical analysis.
- What happens when surface temp. data is added?
Within 2m air temp. datasets, there are other parameters (pressure, wind, etc.) so students will be able to add other parameters and explore different aspects of the data.
Issue in Excel...
Downloaded all the temps. from December. Took the 3m depth because it had the most data. Will have to do something about missing value number (-999). Has a trend line showing that temps. rose over time but there's a big jump at the beginning. Why?
Each column in data is a depth. Units will be meters and degree celsius.
- Will you select X number of stations?
Until we see the data, we can't see which stations. Choose maybe 5 (one at least close to Cherskiy, most complete sets) to do Excel analysis on so we don't overload. Druzhina, Yubileinaya (Kazach'e), Srednekolymsk, Omolon appear to be closest boreholes.
Back to the story...
Students see that the Srednekolymsk borehole is within about 60 miles from Cherskiy so they decide to take a field trip to see the site. Is this something larger? They start looking for more information. With the 20 donated computers they Google NSIDC and contact Dr. Tingjun Zhang. He tells them there's more data from their own country. Focus a bit more on the temp. end since that's update-able.
Vladd's mother (Dr. Zimova) is a researcher at the Cherskiy. Dad is Sergei. The bone Misha finds is a mammoth bone. Sergei, the director of the research center, is trying to repopulate the area with woolly mammoths from recently unfrozen skeletons. Vladd takes his bone to Sergei. The carbon deposit of Loess around Cherskiy is 5 times more than regular permafrost.
OR...
There's all this research activity going on (Westerners running around in jeans chewing bubblegum) so the students talk to Dr. Katey Walter whom is visiting. They are wondering whether or not things are happening elsewhere. Dr. Walter tells them they can help with her research by looking at data from other sites around the area.
Back to data...
Romanovsky's data is hard to use. You can't even figure out which borehole each of the files is from because the names aren't obvious and there is no readme file.
We can tie RAMADDA in as a resource.
Trend analysis of Cherskiy air temp. data in December for each year shows rising trend.
Resources about Cherskiy...
Katey Walter (of burning methane fame) is the PI for the POLARIS project which was centered in Cherskiy.
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://thepolarisproject.org/images/Field08_Fig1.gif&imgrefurl=http://thepolarisproject.org/field2008.shtml&usg=__XSMzsju7oFF1pPQHQWsfU9V4468=&h=398&w=600&sz=122&hl=en&start=5&um=1&tbnid=GJgeVr_dQmL6cM:&tbnh=90&tbnw=135&prev=/images%3Fq%3DCherskiy%26gbv%3D2%26ndsp%3D18%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN%26um%3D1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherskiy_(research_station)#cite_note-0
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katey_Walter
Cherskiy has a WMO collection site so should have specific temp. data from Cherskiy. We can get GHCN data from NCDC. (http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov)
Have this ongoing issue that borehole data is incomplete and doesn't get updated. Should we focus on air temp. data from Chersky which is long term and kept updated? Florence has doubts about this as she's used GHCN data before(EWG met-atlas from GHCN). You get snippets of files from different times, t's not in one big file.
Sessions 5 and 6 - Friday Afternoon
Develop your case study storyline and outline the procedures for data access and analysis Case Study DevelopmentRecord ideas, bullet points, or actual text that will become part of the case study to introduce users to the issues and concepts of the activity. Gather links for appropriate images, diagrams, and background text.
Record the name and URL of all datasets and access/analysis software tools to be used. List the major tasks users will complete, then perform a deliberate walk-through of each task to capture the full sequence of procedures. Give special attention to the most difficult or least intuitive steps, and note points in the sequence where additional information will be helpful.
Add Session 5 and 6 Notes here:
Boundary area of gridded surface air temp. data: 60 - 72.5 W, 125 - 162.5 E
Pieces we need:
- The Google map of eight stations.
- Photos for the story.
- Excel files for the borehole temperatures for the 8 stations. What should we do? Have whole year in a file for a station, and ask students to look at January and July. Put borehole data as a different sheet within the same station file.
These are the main permafrost links:
http://ipa.arcticportal.org
http://ipa.arcticportal.org/index.php/resources/galleries/view/1.html
http://www.uspermafrost.org/
http://nsidc.org/
http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/essay_romanovsky.html
http://www.gi.alaska.edu/snowice/Permafrost-lab/
http://www.crrel.usace.army.mil/permafrosttunnel/
Eight Siberian Borehole Sites Information:
Station_ID=003
Region_ID=024
WMO=24959
Name=Yakutsk
Latitude=62
Longitude=129.7
Station_ID=011
Region_ID=024
WMO=24266
Name=Verkhoyansk
Latitude=67.6
Longitude=133.4
Station_ID=056
Region_ID=024
WMO=24856
Name=Pokrovsk
Latitude=61.5
Longitude=129.2
Station_ID=239
Region_ID=024
WMO=24951
Name=Isit'
Latitude=60.8
Longitude=125.3
Station_ID=240
Region_ID=024
WMO=N/A
Name=Krest-Khal'dzhai [not in Google Maps]
Latitude=62.8
Longitude=134.4
Station_ID=253
Region_ID=024
WMO=24768
Name=Churapcha
Latitude=62
Longitude=132.6
Station_ID=254
Region_ID=024
WMO=N/A
Name=Ytyk-Kel'
Latitude=62.4
Longitude=133.6
Station_ID=012
Region_ID=024
WMO=N/A
Name=Srednekolymsk
Latitude=67.5
Longitude=153.7
Session 7 - Saturday Morning
Enhance your step-by-step procedures by adding "About" sections that provide extra information; List several ideas for "Going Further" with the data or toolsFill in any gaps in your activity outline and add sections that can help users make meaning of the data. Suggest several ideas for the "Going Further" section that challenge users to work with the data and/or tools in other investigations. These suggestions provide launching points for scientific inquiry which is facilitated by the skills learned in the activity.
Add Session 7 Notes here:
Session 8 - Final Team Breakout
Finalize your Activity outline and DataSheet, Generate PowerPoint slides for the report out session, Upload all resources to this pageCreate a 2- or 3-slide ppt file for the report out session.
- Slide 1: Team name, names of team members, and a brief phrase to describe each individual's contribution
- Slide 2: Working title for your activity, names of dataset(s) and tool(s) utilized
- Slide 3: Your choice of something to illustrate your team's vision of the completed activity
Attach the file plus any other documents produced by the team to this page. Include final versions of the team's DataSheet.
Add Session 8 Notes here:
NSIDC_NCAR Summary (PowerPoint 1MB Jun6 09)
