NOAA’s Adopt a Drifter Program (ADP) connects K-16 classrooms around the world with drifting buoys (drifters) provided by the Global Drifter Program (GDP). NOAA’s ocean observations, including those made by Drifters in the Global Drifter Program, are used in climate and weather prediction models and help us understand our changing ocean and its impact on the environment. Increasing our knowledge of patterns, trends, and the state of the global ocean can help with prediction of hurricanes, interannual events such as El Niño, and even the 10-day weather forecast.
The intern will contribute to the Global Drifter Program, a critical program for validating satellite sea surface temperatures, providing data during storms and hurricanes and improving weather models and forecasts. The Global Drifter program is sponsored by the Global Ocean Monitoring and Observing (GOMO) Program. The intern will work directly with multiple mentors at both AOML and GOMO giving them ample opportunities to network and connect across NOAA and beyond.
The ADP connects students across the globe with NOAA’s cutting-edge science and ocean observations. Classrooms that adopt a drifter receive a drifter tracking chart to plot the drifter’s coordinates in near real-time as the drifter moves freely with the surface ocean currents. Along with coordinates, students and teachers receive tracking URLs to observe the drifter’s sensor data (hourly sea surface temperature and in some drifters, hourly sea level pressure). As global ocean temperatures increase, monitoring the ocean surface becomes ever more important. Equally important is communicating the observations to younger audiences and creating the next generation of climate stewards and scientists. The intern will work with the GDP, ADP, and GOMO to create Python Jupyter notebooks for classrooms to visualize drifter data and observe seasonal patterns in sea surface temperatures, track the ocean conditions during hurricane development, and other visualizations. The intern will also have access to the GDP’s quality-controlled datasets that include estimates of surface current velocities since 1979. If desired, the intern may also include changes in surface currents to improve students’ understanding of the role that ocean currents play in regulating our climate on land. In addition to the Jupyter Notebook scripts, the intern will also be tasked with creating accompanying lesson plans that meet the following criteria: National Science Education Standards, NOAA Ocean Literacy Principles, and NOAA Climate Literacy Principles.