Techniques and Teamwork Blossom at Summer Workshops

Summer is high season for workshops, as educators take time to strengthen skills and researchers meet to tackle thorny problems. A bumper crop of gatherings hosted by NCAR and UCAR have been bringing people together across organizations and disciplines, drawing participants from the public and private sectors. The workshops serve as mini-incubators, giving rise to new collaborations from which innovative ideas can emerge.

This summer's offerings are promoting teamwork and discovery in areas ranging from teacher training to climate policy to ice formation in clouds. Here's a sampling of what's going on.

Thinking globally, teaching globally

	Students around the world are gathering a range of weather and climate data, studying the findings, and reporting the results on the GLOBE Web site.

Participants from around the world are gathering in Boulder in July to celebrate the 10th anniversary of an international environmental education program and chart its future direction. Through GLOBE, primary and secondary school students in countries as far flung as Thailand and Tanzania gather data, conduct experiments, and collaborate with scientists and other students. Their teachers receive training, guidance, and access to an international network of expertise. This summer’s annual workshop is the first since UCAR and Colorado State University took over management of the program from NASA in 2003.

Roughly 100 GLOBE participants from 14 countries are attending the week-long sessions. In addition to teachers and scientists, they include representatives from government ministries, informal education centers, and nongovernmental organizations. Sessions range from practical to philosophical. Hands-on workshops are allowing teachers to test hydrological probes in Boulder Creek and learn to observe ruby-throated hummingbirds. Briefings are filling them in on developments in satellite observations and how GLOBE measurements are being used in weather and climate studies. And plenaries are focusing on priorities for the future of the program. With representatives from Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, and North and South America in attendance, a particular focus is how to develop regional collaborations. And, for the first time, vendors are displaying equipment that can be purchased for use in participating schools.

“The international collaboration that comes out of this meeting really strengthens the program,“ says workshop organizer Paula Robinson. “It’s a great opportunity for us to get input on future directions from the folks who are out there where the rubber hits the road. And this is where the new projects get dreamed up.”

Mapping out tomorrow's research

Who better to pick up the scent of a hot research trail than a young university professor? Fresh out of postdoctoral training and eager to establish credentials, such educators are often the ones to embark on innovative paths in Earth system studies.

UCAR drew more than a dozen early-career faculty to Boulder in late June for a three-day workshop. The second annual Junior Faculty Forum brought these scientists together to share notes with peers and explore vital research topics. It also gave NCAR's growing crop of early-career scientists a chance to meet with their university counterparts. The ties they forged could lead to fruitful collaborations.

"It's a great opportunity," says Natalie Mahowald, a biogeochemist who co-organized this year's forum with NCAR colleague Sreela Nandi. The meeting involved about 40 scientists from universities and NCAR. It also brought in staff from funding agencies, such as the National Science Foundation. Special sessions covered research ethics and working with the media.

This year's forum focused on two topics:

The role of coastal zones in global biogeochemical cycles. Although coastal zones encompass 20% of Earth's surface, they are poorly depicted in computer models representing the interaction of Earth's biological, geological, and chemical systems. Scientists want to identify differences among coastal zones and which of their features are most important on a global scale.

The Sun-climate connection. When output from the Sun changes, it can affect Earth's atmosphere in a variety of ways. For example, the Sun's overall energy increases by less than 1% during the peak of its 11-year cycle, but the extreme ultraviolet rays that bombard the outer reaches of our atmosphere can increase by up to 50%. To fully understand the Sun's effects on climate, modelers must analyze these differences and discover how upper-atmospheric changes can translate into effects closer to ground level.

By the end of the forum, participants had laid out future research directions on each topic in "white papers" to be submitted for publication. "We also helped individual scientists establish interesting new agendas for their own future," says Mahowald.

Earth science teachers use simple materials to model the concept of a system moving in and out of a balanced state during the recent Modeling in the Geosciences Workshop. Hear four of the participants describe their workshop experience in this QuickTime video. (Photo by Carlye Calvin.)

Taking computer models out for a spin

"We use models to teach students all the time," says UCAR's Sandra Henderson, "but we don't always explicitly call them out as models. If you're building a cloud in a jar, or a tornado in a bottle, that's a model."

Henderson recently coordinated a two-week crash course in modeling for a select group of middle- and high-school educators from around the country. Sponsored by NASA in late June, the Modeling in the Geosciences Workshop gave 17 teachers a look at how computer-based models are built, how Earth-system scientists use them, and how models can be used in support of middle and high school geoscience education.

Although the most complex models require a supercomputer, simplified models of the atmosphere can run on an everyday desktop machine. The teachers visiting NCAR learned about some streamlined computer models suitable for classroom use, and they brought back software ready to install in their schools.

"These models give students a chance to play 'what if?' games and to explore interactions within a complex system," explains Roberta Johnson, UCAR's director of Education and Outreach. A student might decrease rainfall in a model, for example, and see how that affects vegetation and temperature—which, in turn, could affect future rainfall. "Done right," says Henderson, "a model can be a very engaging tool."

The workshop's content is aligned with national science education standards, and the participants each develop their own teaching units to complement the standards-based curriculum. They will also share their knowledge with other educators in their school districts. The teachers will reconvene online this autumn and reunite for a follow-up meeting in Boulder in spring 2005.

NCAR also sponsors a similar teacher-training workshop each summer on climate and global change. With both meetings, competition is keen for the limited space, says Henderson. "We look for teachers who are leaders, who aren't afraid to go beyond established curricula, and who are always looking to challenge their students."

Paving the way to safer winter highways

	Displays like this MDSS prototype will allow highway maintenance operators to gauge conditions and prescribe tailored treatments for specific stretches of road. Click here or on the image for a larger version.

Transportation maintenance specialists from the academic, government, and private sectors are meeting at NCAR in July to explore ways to improve safety and cost efficiency on winter roads by putting high-tech tools in the hands of the people making local decisions. The diverse group is gathering for the Maintenance Decision Support System Stakeholder Meeting, MDSS Technology Transfer Workshop, and a meeting of the Aurora Board, which represents road operation agencies in the United States, Canada, and Europe.

"The MDSS project is exciting because it's the first time anyone has combined advanced weather- and road-condition prediction to generate anti-icing guidance on the scale of a plow route," says William Mahoney, the NCAR program manager on the project.

The MDSS is a prototype for a sophisticated software package that will ultimately help winter road managers make deicing decisions based on weather research and road conditions along plow routes. NCAR is one of five national research centers participating in the development of the MDSS, a program of the Federal Highway Administration’s Office of Transportation Operations.

The meeting features results and lessons learned from the second MDSS field demonstration that took place in Iowa during winter 2003-04. Also included are presentations on related transportation maintenance issues, such as anti-icing techniques, mitigation of blowing snow, road temperature prediction, and more. An additional session is showcasing product innovations from the private sector that address problems related to surface transportation and winter road maintenance.

About 110 participants are attending, including staff from state departments of transportation, national laboratories, universities, the Federal Highway Administration, and private vendors.

Facilitating social change in a changing climate

How do you get people talking about a problem, devising solutions, and putting those solutions in motion? A rare mix of experts from the disparate worlds of policy, social action, and research spent three days in Boulder exchanging ideas about the elements of effective communication and how change happens. The workshop itself was designed to maximize communication among participants from different fields who don't usually talk to one another about current research or what works and doesn't work on the practical level.

The gathering in early June examined ways to improve communication and action in response to a changing climate. The organizers brought together decision makers from city and state government, staff from nongovernmental organizations representing the business and policy communities, and researchers from a wide range of fields, including sociology, political science, communication, and psychology.

Communicating Urgency, Facilitating Social Change: New Strategies for Climate Change grew out of a request to NCAR by the MacArthur Foundation to develop ways of improving the exchange of information and ideas between the climate science and climate policy communities.

The 45 participants began from the same starting point as the majority of climate scientists across the globe: that burning fossil fuels for electricity, heat, and transportation is pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and warming the planet.

The discussions examined how change occurs "on any scale, from individual behavior to policy at the highest levels," says geographer Susanne Moser, who organized the workshop with NCAR colleague Lisa Dillling.

"Our starting point was that it's not just a matter of explaining the science better," says Moser. "If we're interested, as NCAR is, in science in service to society, then we ought to know how to get information about climate change to those who need it in an effective way."

Participants will continue their cross-disciplinary dialogue while putting together a book and other publications based on the workshop.