89th American Meteorological Society Annual Meeting

Monday, 12 January 2009: 1:45 PM
Using NOAA data in the classroom
Room 125B (Phoenix Convention Center)
Daniel P. Pisut, I.M. Systems Group, Silver Spring, MD
Poster PDF (627.4 kB)
The National Data Centers of NOAA contain a wealth of archived weather, climate, geophysical, and oceanographic data dating as far back as the observations recorded by Thomas Jefferson. However, accessing these resources is sometimes daunting to those people, especially teachers, not familiar with the user interfaces of the data archives. Since there is a strong demand for environmental data in the classroom, the NOAA Satellite and Information Service has developed a portal to greatly increase the ease of finding data products that may be included in classroom curricula. The portal presents the easiest to use resources for accessing data, and categorizes the data products by the level of complexity in using them. For instance, the novice investigator may use Google Earth to view weather maps and access data from weather stations for a single point in time. Intermediate users may perform simple time-series analyses on ocean buoy data downloaded from intuitive data portal websites. The more advanced user may access and visualize archived satellite data in applications such as McIDAS-V. Educators from NOAA will demonstrate these technologies and provide classroom activities to implement their use.

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