VOCALS - and Educational Outreach

So, now that I'm nearing the end of the 6 week project here in Chile, I figure I tell you a little bit about what we're doing :)

So the name of the project is VOCALS - Vamos Ocean Cloud Atmosphere Land Study. Vamos is the name of a previous research project carried out in these regions, and stands for Variability in the American Monsoon System. The overall goal of project VOCALS is to learn more about the climate of the South American Continent and the Southeast Pacific Ocean. This ranges from the small scale physics and chemistry of particles, gasses, clouds, and precipitation, to the dynamics and (climate) modeling of it all. As I've mentioned before, I'm studying the little aerosol particles in the atmosphere here, and investigate how well they are able to nucleate into cloud droplets (these particles are called CCN - Cloud Condensation Nuclei). Several scientists are also interested in things that go on below the ocean surface (a topic I know considerably less about), so there are a bunch of oceanographers involved as well. In total, there are about 150 scientists, engineers, and technicians from 40 universities and nine countries involved with this project!

Our official logo:

There's really no point in me telling more about it on my blog, because of course there is an official website set up with all the information there: http://www.eol.ucar.edu/projects/vocals/

Part of doing scientific research, and getting the funding for this research (which is a lot of money, trust me) is also to do educational outreach. So UCAR in Boulder has set up an even better/more fun website for the project (you can find everything you ever wanted to know on there :) ) http://www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/vocals/vocals_intro.html&portal=vocals, and is really aimed at school aged children. Every day, this page gets thousands of hits from kids all across the world, and therefore makes a great educational tool about science in the field (other research projects are also on this website). You can see that there are buttons for 'English' and 'Spanish', and also for 'Beginner', 'Intermedate', and 'Advanced', which makes the story more or less difficult depending on the age group of the child.

Before the project started, all the scientists involved were asked if they wanted to participate in this outreach project, and of course I said 'yes'. We provide a bio and picture, and during the project our job is to write "Postcards from the field" - a short story with a picture, describing what we do here in the field, so that kids can visit these virtual postcards on the internet.

On this site http://www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/vocals/people.html&portal=vocals you can find all the people that agreed to this, including me (scroll down). Then if you go to the "postcards" page, you can find all the post cards we've written :)

This is the nerdiest contribution I made :)

So, if you have/or know any school aged kids that love to browse the internet, send them the link!