Expect temperatures to drop when the moon passes between the sun and Earth on April 8, casting a shadow over Toledo just before 3:15 p.m.
But how much?
Students observe cloud cover through the NASA-funded project GLOBE Mission EARTH led by Dr. Kevin Czajkowski, a professor in the Department of Geography and Planning. Project partners will work with student and citizen scientists across the country to take note of air temperature, ground temperature and cloud cover at points throughout the day of the total solar eclipse in April.
That’s one of the questions Dr. Kevin Czajkowski, a professor in The University of Toledo’s Department of Geography and Planning, is interested in answering through the NASA-funded project GLOBE Mission EARTH. He’s working with student and citizen scientists across the country to take note of air temperature, ground temperature and cloud cover at points throughout the day.
“Science literacy is so important, and one of the best ways for people to understand what scientists do is to actually do it,” Czajkowski said. “People are already curious and excited about the eclipse, so it’s a great opportunity for us to offer a hands-on opportunity to ask questions and gather relevant information like any scientist would.”
Czajkowski leads GLOBE Mission EARTH, which transforms the way science is taught to students in kindergarten through high school by engaging them in real scientific research. It leverages the resources of both NASA and Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment (GLOBE), an international science and education program that provides students, teachers and citizen scientists around the world the opportunity to participate in data collection and the scientific process and to contribute meaningfully to research on their local and global environments. NASA has invested $24 million in GLOBE Mission EARTH since it launched in 2015.
The planned eclipse-specific activities work is typical of the hands-on experiments and direct observations that are at the heart of GLOBE Mission EARTH, which today reaches more than 5,000 students nationwide. These students have used the same tools and methodologies they’ll use during the eclipse to explore questions critical to the study of urban heat islands and climate.
Air and ground temperature can be recorded with standard and infrared thermometers, while cloud cover observations are as simple as looking up. Data is shared using the GLOBE Observer app.
Student volunteers will facilitate eclipse data collection at UToledo on April 8, when students, faculty, staff and community members head to campus for an eclipse viewing event between noon and 6 p.m. They’ll equip anyone they encounter on Centennial Mall to collect and share their temperature readings and cloud cover observations before, during and after the shadow overtakes Toledo.
Czajkowski has been working with representatives of approximately 25 libraries and 45 schools regionally and around the United States, who will simultaneously lead data collection at their sites. His partners at GLOBE Mission EARTH, who stretch from Boston University on the East Coast to the University of California at Berkeley on the West Coast, have been doing the same in their communities.
“During the most recent total solar eclipse to cross the United States in 2017, 4,000 citizen scientists submitted data points through GLOBE,” Czajkowski said. “We’re hoping for even higher participation in April.”
It’s not clear what we may learn from this collaboratively sourced dataset. That will be the question posed this summer to 10 high school students through the STEM Enhancement in Earth Science (SEES) program at the University of Texas at Austin’s Center for Space Research.
When GLOBE received more than 80,000 data submissions before, during and after totality in 2017, Czajkowski said researchers drew some interesting conclusions: Surface temperatures fluctuated more than air temperature, and cumulous clouds dissipated similar to how they behave under the relative cool of nighttime.
But their most significant finding? The validity of citizen science.
Czajkowski and his collaborators compared air temperatures recorded by citizen scientists and uploaded to GLOBE with air temperatures recorded by National Weather Service weather stations in the vicinity in a chapter they contributed to the book “Celebrating the 2017 Great American Eclipse: Lessons Learned from the Path of Totality.” They found that most submitted recordings were within 2 degrees Celsius of the numbers recorded at the geographically appropriate weather station.
“That’s reasonably accurate,” Czajkowski said. “GLOBE has a database of more than 150 million observations and there have been research projects completed using it, but there’s always a question of accuracy with citizen science. The eclipse gave us the perfect dataset to test it.”
