Noone, Simon, Brody, Alison, Brown, Sasha, Cantwell, Niamh, Coleman, Martha, Sarsfield Collins, Louise, Darcy, Caoilfhionn, Dee, Dick, Donegan, Sean, Fealy, Rowan, Flattery, Padraig, McGovern, Rhonda, Menkman, Caspar, Murphy, Michael, Phillips, Christopher, Roche, Martina and Thorne, Peter (2019) Geo-locate Project: A novel approach to resolving meteorological station location issues with the assistance of undergraduate students. Geoscience Communication, 2. pp. 157-171. ISSN 2569-7102
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Abstract
The Global Land and Marine Observations
Database aims to produce a comprehensive land-based meteorological data archive and inventory. This requires the compilation of available information on data from land-based
meteorological stations from all known available in situ meteorological data repositories/sources at multiple timescales
(e.g. sub-daily, daily, and monthly). During this process the
service team members have identified that many of the data
sources contain stations with incorrect location coordinates.
These stations cannot be included in the processing to be
served via the Copernicus Climate Change Service until the
issues are satisfactorily resolved. Many of these stations are
in regions of the world where a sparsity of climate data
currently exists, such as Southeast Asia and South America. As such, resolving these issues would provide important additional climate data, but this is a very labour-intensive
task. Therefore, we have developed the Geo-locate project –
that enrols the help of undergraduate geography students at
Maynooth University, Ireland – to resolve some of the landbased station geolocation issues. To date, we have run two
Geo-locate projects: the first in the 2017/2018 academic year
and the second in the 2018/2019 academic year. Both iterations have been very successful with 1926 of the 2168 total
candidate stations ostensibly resolved, which equates to an
88 % success rate. At the same time, students have gained
critical skills that helped to meet the expected pedagogical
outcomes of the second-year curriculum, while producing a
lasting scientific legacy. We asked the class of 2018/2019
to reflect critically upon the outcomes, and we present the
results herein; these results provide important feedback on
what students felt that they gained from their participation
and how we may improve the experience and learning outcomes in future. We will be continuing to run Geo-locate
projects over the next few years. We encourage other organizations to investigate the potential for engaging university
students to help resolve similar data issues while enriching
the student experience and aiding in the delivery of learning
outcomes. This paper provides details of the project, and all
supporting information such as project guidelines and templates to enable other organizations to instigate similar programmes.
Item Type: | Article |
---|---|
Keywords: | Geo-locate project; novel approach; meteorological station; location issues; undergraduate students; |
Academic Unit: | Faculty of Social Sciences > Geography Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Institutes > Irish Climate Analysis and Research Units, ICARUS |
Item ID: | 13462 |
Identification Number: | 10.5194/gc-2-157-2019 |
Depositing User: | Peter Thorne |
Date Deposited: | 29 Oct 2020 11:41 |
Journal or Publication Title: | Geoscience Communication |
Publisher: | Copernicus Publications |
Refereed: | Yes |
Related URLs: | |
URI: | https://mu.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/13462 |
Use Licence: | This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available here |
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