Hutt students are winners at forecasting future climate
Secondary school students from the Hutt Valley have been taking part in a global experiment to help forecast the climate later this century.
Climateprediction.net is based at Oxford University, UK, and co-ordinated by New Zealand scientist Dr Dave Frame. It is one of the largest climate modelling experiments in the world.
Royal Society Teacher Fellow, Phil Kendon, has been based at NIWA this year and set up a competition to encourage secondary school students to use data from the climateprediction.net experiment. The competition was sponsored by NIWA, BP, GNS Science, and Futures Thinking Aotearoa. Students were asked to produce powerpoint presentations outlining what their models showed and then to consider the implications that could arise, in a particular location in the world.
The best presentations by year 10 students were produced by students from Hutt Valley High School – Yvonne Tse and Janine Tiu (1st Prize), Richard Robson, Harry Baldock and Andrew Bruce (2nd =), and Upper Hutt College – Jaymie Jarvis and Hollie Russell (2nd =). In year 9, the top presentations were all done by Hutt Valley High School students: Kelly Ye, Molly Tait and Hana Small (1st), Erica Webb and Ella Mayston (2nd =), Alice Meads and Alex Johnson (2nd =).
The presentations were judged by a panel of three scientists: Dr Jim Renwick, Sylvia Nichol (NIWA), and Dr James Crampton (GNS Science).
Anyone with a home computer can run the experiment in the background using spare capacity when their computer is turned on. Over a period of six to 12 weeks, the computer generates data that is sent to the Oxford scientists. By having thousands of computers round the world running the model with slight 'tweaks', the scientists can improve the predictions of how the climate could change under different ’scenarios'.
Upper Hutt College computers completed over 3,200 'model years' or about 70 cycles of the climateprediction.net experiment. This is the biggest contribution to the experiment by any school in the world so far.
The data from the students' climate models generated predictions of an average global temperature increase of between 2 – 4° C towards the end of this century. 'The forecasting activity proved to be an excellent interactive tool,' says Royal Society teacher fellow Phil Kendon, who has been based at NIWA this year. 'Hopefully teachers will continue to use climateprediction.net in schools, as a springboard to enable students to learn about the possible consequences of future climate change and what we should be doing now to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions.'
Climateprediction.net (pron. 'climate prediction dot net') operates in a similar way to the 'search for extraterrestrial intelligence', seti@home. This uses a home computer to analyse radio telescope data: setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu