588 Balloons and Buoys: Engaging the Community in Weather Science through a Pioneering Air to Ocean Weather Balloon Launch

Tuesday, 9 January 2018
Exhibit Hall 3 (ACC) (Austin, Texas)
Theresa Ruggiero, Concord-Carlisle Regional High School, Concord, MA; and C. J. Peachey and S. Lane

High school sporting events have always been a place where students get to showcase their talents to an audience that extends beyond the high school walls. Why don’t we take the same approach to showcasing our young scientists and engineers? This year, Concord-Carlisle High School will turn our weather balloon launch into a community event. In addition to showcasing the launch team and pioneering weather balloon, the event will engage a wide audience in interactive exhibits on topics of interest related to weather science. This weather expo will include students from elementary to high school age, community groups such as the local boy scout troup, and weather community members like the NWS and NOAA. High school freshmen (mentored by upper-class meteorology students) will create displays, demos, and presentations on topics in atmospheric and ocean science. In addition, we will host tables about our club and our outreach opportunities, such as snow shoveling for seniors and visits to classrooms. Students will explore, learn, and share their knowledge; other members of the community will be able to engage with the students and learn from their research.

Beyond the engagement the launch day will create, the planning phase and the post launch phase will be events as well. Pre-launch, all students planning for the launch or their own displays and demos will be engaged in weather science. Our club is working closely with Stratostar to spearhead the testing and development of new technologies for our SeaCom unit, a weather balloon launched set of instruments meant to be landed in the ocean for further data collection. Together, we are developing a new type of mission that blends ocean and atmospheric data collection, which can then be shared with other schools, connecting us across the nation. Post launch, our SeaCom unit will be collecting and communicating data about the atmosphere and ocean in near-real time from our sensors. We will set up a mission control page that students and community can follow using a website url and contribute to on social media through a hashtag. Using the data collected from the SeaCom unit launch as a springboard, students from Concord-Carlisle Weather Services will create and teach lessons regarding atmosphere-ocean topics to be included in the meteorology class curriculum. This multi-stage learning experience surrounding a community weather expo and launch will improve student and community-wide engagement in weather science in the Concord-Carlisle area.

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