HELPING TALK UP A STORM
Sea Grant Website Links Public, Media and Educators With Internet Data on El NiÃ’o
Understanding El Nino has been a challenge for just about everyone over the past six months. Now comes an opportunity for individuals to learn from some of the nation's top experts on El Nino on how to explain the concept in schools and to the general public.
The University of Southern California Sea Grant program has designed a new Website to help school teachers catch the wave of interest in El NiÃ’o and is sponsoring an on-line educational seminar beginning next week to help promote better understanding of this powerful weather phenomenon.
"El NiÃ’o Workshop Online for Educators," which begins this month (March), will provide strategies for using the Internet to teach kindergartners through high school students about El NiÃ’o, the occasional disruption of the ocean-atmosphere system that has dramatic consequences for weather around the globe. The information presented will also be of interested to members of the media and general public who also want to understand more about El Nino.
"Thanks to the Internet, for the first time in history the general public has up-to-the-minute access to much of the same information on a major climatic phenomenon as the scientific community," says Douglas Sherman, Ph.D., director of USC Sea Grant and chairman of the geography department I n USC's College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. "This is a great opportunity to convey the wonder and excitement of science, and we want to prepare school teachers to make the most of it."
Participants will learn to develop school curricula incorporating easily accessible data on weather abnormalities, sea-level rise and ocean temperature shifts attributed to El NiÃ’o. The information is posted on the Web as soon as it is collected by satellites and thousands of buoys in the Pacific Ocean.
"In many cases, students can monitor shifts in temperatures, currents and sea level in real time - that is, as quickly as the information is being recorded and as quickly as scientists are analyzing it," says Phyllis Grifman, associate director of outreach programs for USC Sea Grant.
Organized like a scientific workshop, the on-line event will provide an opportunity to interact with renowned experts in marine biology, oceanography, climatology, sophisticated scientific instrumentation and coastal hazards.
"Kids have a natural enthusiasm for computers and the Internet, and if we can tap into that to teach science, then it makes our job that much easier," says Lynn Whitley, education program coordinator for USC Sea Grant.
As engaging as developing events like El NiÃ’o are for students, they pose a particular challenge for school teachers, says Jeanine Cripe Mauch, a workshop discussion leader and veteran science educator with the Los Angeles Unified School District.
"It's not like there's a textbook on El NiÃ’o, because the scientific community's understanding is still developing," Mauch says. "You can go to the Internet and pull together reliable information, but it's really time-consuming. There must be about 6,000 hits on El NiÃ’o, which most teachers don't have the time to wade through."
During each week of the month-long online workshop, a noted authority will give a keynote address on a specific aspect of El NiÃ’o, which is Spanish for "little boy" or "Christ child." (The name refers to the tendency of the phenomenon, first observed by South American fishermen, to arrive around Christmas time.)
-- Jorge Vazquez, a physical oceanographer with the ocean science division of Caltech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, will provide an overview of El NiÃ’o data available on the World Wide Web. Vazquez will offer a particular emphasis on JPL's satellite project that tracks rises in sea level due to the rise in ocean temperatures associated with El NiÃ’o and the resulting expansion of ocean waters. (March 9-13)
-- Don Chambers, a research engineer and scientist at the University of Texas at Austin's Center for Space Research, will discuss how satellite technology works and how accurate it has to be to predict El NiÃ’o and other climatic events. (March 16-20)
-- James O'Brien, director of the Center for Oceanic and Atmospheric Prediction at Florida State University, will discuss past occurrences of the climatic condition, which occurs every four years or so, as well as El NiÃ’o's reverse - the so-called "La NiÃ’a" or "El Viejo," which is characterized by unseasonably cooler ocean temperatures in the Pacific. (March 23-27)
-- Mark Eakin, program officer of NOAA's Office of Global Programs, will also discuss strategies for making sense of on-line climatic data, but his emphasis will be on NOAA's research. The agency is tracking shifts in sea surface temperature through satellite imagery and a vast network of data buoys in the Pacific Ocean. (March 30-April 3)
Teachers will be able to converse with keynote speakers through email. They will also be able to break into seminar-like discussions with six other experts in sample lesson plans for El NiÃ’o, coastal hazards during El NiÃ’o, the severity of storms and hurricanes spawned by El NiÃ’o and the effects of El NiÃ’o on marine mammals, fish, business and the economy.
Leading these "chat sessions" will be Ann Close, program manager of USC's Wrigley Institute for Environmental Studies; Ron Crouse, head instructor for marine education at the Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport, Oregon; Leslie Ewing, a coastal engineer for the California Coastal Commission; Mauch, a director of educational programs at the LAUSD's Center for Marine Studies at Fort MacArthur; Anthony Michaels, an oceanographer and director of USC's Wrigley Institute for Environmental Studies; and Sue Yoder, USC Sea Grant's marine advisory services leader.
Activities also include a video lecture by John Kermond, a visiting scientist at NOAA's Office of Global Programs.
Information from each session and keynote lecture will remain posted on the Website for the on- line workshop, allowing participants to join the event at any point.
The on-line workshop for educators is an offshoot of USC Sea Grant's El NiÃ’o Web page, which provides basic information on the phenomenon that has been blamed for flooding in the Western and Southern United States and fires and droughts in the west Pacific.
The El NiÃ’o Web page - http//www.usc.edu/go/seagrant - offers links to Websites providing up-to-the-minute data on ocean surface temperatures, ocean surface levels and other primary scientific information from the National Oceanic Datacenter, Scripps Institute, NOAA, Florida State University and other leading institutions in El NiÃ’o research. The Website also provides survival strategies for residents of cliff-side and shoreline dwellings, which have proven to be at particular risk from the rise in sea level associated with El NiÃ’o.
The on-line workshop is being organized in cooperation with College of Exploration, a McLean, Virginia-based leader in distance learning. Teachers who participate in the workshop, which runs through April 3, may earn one unit of graduate-level university credit from the University of Maryland or California State University, Long Beach.
The cost for the computer password to the on-line workshop is $30. Receiving college credit costs an additional $75 from Cal State Long Beach or $150 from the University of Maryland. Registration material is available at USC Sea Grant's main El NiÃ’o Website.
In April, a summarized version of the information from the online workshop will be posted and available free of charge on USC Sea Grant's main El NiÃ’o Website. In the meantime, links to all Websites being discussed in the on-line workshop may be reached free of charge from the "splash page" of the main El NiÃ’o Website.
USC Sea Grant, one of 29 programs funded by NOAA in coastal and Great Lakes states, specializes in programs aimed at the "urban ocean." In addition to sponsoring scientific research,USC Sea Grant also provides information about marine resources, recreation and education.
To obtain the conference password for press reviewing purposes, contact Grifman at (213) 740-1963.
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