Sunday, 14 January 2007
Education and Climate
Exhibit Hall C (Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center)
The island of Puerto Rico, located in the Caribbean region, can be suitable scenario for cutting edge meteorology and climatology research of tropical marine environments. Puerto Rico has in an area of 100 miles long by 35 miles wide a wide variety of micro climates that subjected to extreme atmospheric disturbances, mostly hurricanes. The availability of higher education research institutions and several research groups concerned with interdisciplinary interests on climate and climate change provides scientific expertise in several fields, for example the Caribbean Climate Studies group can be highlighted. The above mentioned conditions make the study of the meteorology and climatology of Puerto Rico a challenge and a desired goal. Also the topics of weather and climate have been identified as a common ground were research scientists, educators, alumni, teachers and students from Puerto Rico can share research activities with mutual benefit. An outreach initiative, named Education and Climate, is being developed to provide a virtual learning environment for the education and research communities to share the administration of a research quality network of weather stations. A growing need of high quality meteorological data is evident and the implementation of sensor networks is seen as one of the most promising alternatives to provide it. The inclusion of schools in the network is sought to provide for our educational and scientific needs. Several teacher training initiatives have been implemented to strengthen the project and will be presented in detail. Our project links research and education, with activities centered on the contribution of the teachers and their students, and a positive outcome is expected.
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