The Schools of the Pacific Rainfall Climate Experiment (SPaRCE) is an NSF-funded project with the primary goal of gathering rainfall data on the ground throughout the Pacific islands, including Guam, American Samoa and the Federated States of Micronesia. The data-gatherers are Pacific island students – from elementary grades to high schools and colleges. Over 145 schools currently participating in the program report their data to meteorologists and other interested parties, including NASA, via the Internet. Because most of the SPaRCE sites are on small islands and atolls (ring-shaped islands enclosing a lagoon) which have little funding for special projects, this pan-Pacific endeavor enhances local science programs and provides important hands-on environmental education.

Continuously funded by the NSF's East Asia and Pacific Program, the SPaRCE project is coordinated on the U.S. side by Dr. Susan Postawko, Dr. Mark Morrissey and Dr. Victoria Duca, all from the University of Oklahoma. When a new school joins the SPaRCE team, the Oklahoma home camp sends direct-read plastic rain gauges with an instructional video and manual for help in placing, reading and upkeeping the gauges. Also included are workbooks and videos on topics such as global climate and Pacific region weather. As students progress in the program, they receive additional instrumentation such as sling psychrometers, advanced thermometers, more educational materials and related science experiment kits.

On the Pacific islands, which lack formal weather stations, SPaRCE students contribute nearly a third of all the data being collected by scientists. The student data is combined with weather services reports into the Comprehensive Pacific Rainfall Database, which also contains data from the U.S. National Climatic Data Center, the French Polynesian Meteorological Service and others. Since the program's inception, the amount of rainfall in some student-observed regions has clearly changed. Depending on continuing trends, this might confirm one prediction of global climate models, that in a globally warming world we'll detect subtle but significant changes in precipitation patterns. Along with rainfall data measurements, SPaRCE students and their trained teachers collect temperature and humidity data, and some collect daily ozone measurements using special handheld instruments.

The Pacific island students are also part of, and actually forerunners to, the worldwide network of students, teachers and scientists call GLOBE -- Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment. Dr. Susan Postawko again is a leader in this program, which has international agreements with nations ranging from Argentina to Mali, Norway to Pakistan. As with all GLOBE participants, after the Pacific island students perform their measurements of air, surface water, soil temperature, moisture and more, they send their data through the mail to the GLOBE Student Data Archive. The archive data is available to all GLOBE participants to witness the dynamic results of their efforts, and is used in research by scientists worldwide.

The GLOBE project was designed to link scientists and schoolchildren in a global information network with the purpose of better understanding the Earth's environment and the changes occurring within it. Because the student data helps scientists understand more subtle variations in temperature and precipitation than satellites or large weather stations can detect, the project will keep using student-gathered data to cross-verify satellite observations. The data are used to explore changes in global precipitation patterns, including the effects of El Nino. The climatic effects of El Nino are of particular concern to Pacific islands residents due to the vulnerability of low-lying islands to sea level fluctuations and rainfall pattern changes. For the Pacific island student-scientists, the SPaRCE and GLOBE programs enhance local and global environmental awareness, promote understanding of the need to cooperate with other nations to investigate global climate change and provide an opportunity to make a major contribution to the global climate research effort.

The SPaRCE Web site at http://radar.metr.ou.edu/sparce/sparce.htm