The Republic of the Marshall Islands Climate Change Website:SPaRCE

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National Activities - SPaRCE

Operating on limited funding from various government agencies, the list of SPARCE participants includes more than 130 schools from 15 different countries. The participating schools in the Marshall Islands are the George Seitz Elementary School in Kwajalein Atoll, the Majuro Cooperative School, the Wotje Elementary School and the Nibun Elementary School.

Most of the sites are on small islands or atolls which have very little funding for computers or special projects. SPARCE provides environmental education and enhancement of Pacific Island science programs. In turn, the students collect important data to be used for climatological research. Besides gaining a better understanding of basic concepts, these students become an integral part of the study of weather patterns in the Pacific.

The SPARCE program goals are:

• to increase the number of rain gauges and other meteorological instrumentation across the Pacific, and to incorporate collected observations into a comprehensive Pacific database to be used for climate research purposes;
• to foster interest and increase awareness among students and teachers as to the importance of cooperation between different nations in investigating potential climate change;
• to educate students and teachers as to the importance of rainfall (particularly in the Pacific region) to climate studies;
• to make a major contribution to the global climate research effort by collecting and analyzing Pacific meteorological data;
• to encourage scientific and cultural exchange between students from different countries.

The rainfall data collected by participants is entered into the Comprehensive Pacific Rainfall Database (PACRAIN). PACRAIN also contains rainfall data reported from the Pacific New Zealand Meteorological Service.

SPARCE is sponsored by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement/Tropical Western Pacific (APM/TWP) programs, GLOBE, PEACESAT Hawai’i, the Oklahoma NASA Space Grant Consortium, and the University of Oklahoma.