MY NASA DATA E-note (Number 24)
July 2008

Greetings MY NASA DATA Alumni and Newslist members!

The monthly E-note is sent to anyone who is interested in learning more
about or keeping up to date with the MY NASA DATA project. If you know
someone who is interested in this information, the sign-up can be found at:
http://eosweb.larc.nasa.gov/HPDOCS/email_registration.html

1) MY NASA DATA Summer Workshop 2008
2) GRACE and TES data added to the LAS
3) Lesson #20 passes ESE review
4) Time-at-a-glance table has been reformatted
5) Be a cloud observer for the summer

1) MY NASA DATA Summer Workshop 2008

The MY NASA DATA Summer Workshop, for educators of grades 6-12, was
hosted by the Science Directorate at NASA Langley Research Center, June
22-27. From comments received from the participants, the workshop was a
success! Twenty-one educators from across the United States participated
in content presentations, tours, field trips, demonstrations, and
hands-on activities. A key feature of the workshop was learning to use
the Live Access Server to access and display data, then developing a
lesson to engage students in studying the data-sets.

Stay tuned for future postings of these great lessons under Teacher Plans!

To read more about the workshop, you may visit the on-line NASA Langley
Researcher News, at
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/langley/news/researchernews/rn_workshop.html

2) GRACE and TES data added to the LAS

The Live Access Server (LAS Armstrong version) has recently incorporated
data from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) project.
GRACE maps variations in the Earth’s gravity field. This is a very new
method for measuring changes in mass. The LAS parameter is ‘equivalent
water thickness’ and there is both an ocean and a land component. This
parameter is explained in the Science Glossary which contains a link to
the GRACE project for further exploration.

The Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer (TES) is one of four instruments
on the Aura satellite. TES distinguishes concentration of different
gases at different altitudes in order to better understand the chemistry
in the air we breathe. We have incorporated a measure of methane (CH4),
which is a potent greenhouse gas, from TES in the LAS Armstrong version.


3) Lesson #20 passes ESE review

Another of the lessons in the Teacher Plans collection has passed the
headquarters-level Earth Science Education (ESE) review! The ESE review
panel is composed of three educators and three scientists. Lesson #20,
“Using radiosonde data from a weather balloon launch”, contributed by
Carl Hendricksen, from Dunlap, Illinois, is designed for grades 7-12.
Data collected during the July 2005 balloon launch are used by students
to analyze weather parameters.

4) Time-at-a-glance table has been reformatted

Based on comments from our workshop participants, we have included a
second time line for our "Time Coverage at a Glance" page
(http://mynasadata.larc.nasa.gov/ParmTime.html) to make it easier to
determine the dates of coverage for LAS parameters.

5) Be a cloud observer for the summer!

What are your plans for the summer? Traveling? Teaching summer or
year-round classes? Here is an opportunity to become a cloud observer
for the NASA CERES S’COOL project, the sister project of MY NASA DATA in
the NASA Langley Science Directorate. While you are engaged in summer
activities, you may observe from any location! Check out the newly
designed Rover pages on the S’COOL website, at
http://asd-www.larc.nasa.gov/SCOOL/Rover/. Because this is a new feature
on the S’COOL website, please consider sending your feedback to help the
S’COOL team improve the Rover pages.


As always, we would love to hear from you! Your feedback is very helpful
in improving the website and materials!