WHITHER THE WEATHER

BY INTERNET?

The cars behaved like kangaroos!

The story of MetLinkInternational 1999

by

Malcolm Walker

Education Officer of the Royal Meteorological Society, 104 Oxford Road, Reading, RG1 7LL, United Kingdom

1. Introduction

The origins of MetLinkInternational lie in a proposal put to the Royal Meteorological Society's Education Group on 17 September 1997, the essence of it being that primary and secondary schools in the United Kingdom and the rest of Europe should exchange weather observations daily for a period and, with the help and guidance of volunteer meteorological professionals, analyse and interpret them (see Annex 1). The Group approved the proposal in principle, agreed that the project would be called MetNetEurope, and asked Malcolm Walker (then at Cardiff University) and John Harris (Head of Geography at Radley College, Oxfordshire) to devise a pilot project for possible implementation in early 1998. An on-screen demonstration of MetNetEurope's proposed features was conducted by John at the Education Group's meeting at Radley College on 11 December 1997, and the Group, as a consequence, agreed that the project would run in January and February 1998.

In the event, twelve schools took part, five of them in the UK, two in Finland, one in Sweden, two in Spain, one in Cyprus and one outside Europe, in Zimbabwe. The project was co-ordinated by John Harris, with support provided by Malcolm Walker and other professional meteorologists, these being Dave Shaw of The Met.Office, Ross Reynolds of Reading University and Steve Dorling of the University of East Anglia. John created a MetNetEurope website and developed it as the project progressed. He also wrote an article about the project, which was published in the January 1999 issue of the World Meteorological Organization's Bulletin (Volume 48, pages 53-56). The Education Group considered MetNetEurope a success and resolved at their meeting on 19 March 1998 that the project be repeated in early 1999, with more schools participating than in 1998.

MetNetEurope was renamed MetLinkInternational in the summer of 1998, when it was discovered that Weather Services International had registered the name MetNet. This change proved appropriate, for it emerged in the autumn of 1998 that a number of schools outside Europe were interested in taking part in the 1999 project.

1.2 Aims, objectives and methodology

The intention of MetNetEurope was that participating teachers and pupils would:

• use the Internet to enhance weather studies;

• record weather data daily over a two-week period;
• use e-mail to exchange the data with other teachers and pupils;
• use e-mail to interact with volunteer meteorological professionals;
• develop weather projects, plot graphs and compare results with other teachers and pupils;
• encourage pupils to write articles about weather events.

In general terms, the aims of MetNetEurope were that the project would:

• arouse and sustain interest in the subject of meteorology;
• help develop the basic observing and instrument skills of pupils;
• provide an interesting learning vehicle for the development of basic information technology (IT) skills.

The objectives were, as stated in the original proposal (see Annex 1), that pupils would become able to:

• relate clouds and weather to the current synoptic situation and satellite imagery;
• observe and record weather systematically;
• present weather data by appropriate statistical means;
• account for differences of weather from place to place in terms of latitude, distance from the sea, altitude and other factors;
• account for weather phenomena in terms of the processes involved.

The aims, objectives and methodology of MetLinkInternational 1999 were essentially the same as for MetNetEurope.

In broad terms, the aim of MetLinkInternational was to enhance appreciation and understanding of weather from scientific and geographical standpoints. More specifically, the meteorological aims of the project were to:

• improve pupils' abilities to collect and record weather data;
• appreciate weather differences from region to region;
• understand the reasons for the differences.

The non-meteorological aims were to enhance and improve:

• e-mail, web-handling and other IT skills;
• information-handling and data-handling in general;
• use of instruments;
• writing and reporting skills.

The overall outcomes of MetLinkInternational were seen as:

• a greater awareness of, and enthusiasm for, meteorology as a science-based subject;
• the recognition of meteorology as one of the few subjects which can embrace the full scope of experimental method, scientific analysis and interactive IT skills in an engaging way for children;

• a wider interest in the teaching of meteorology at both primary and secondary levels;
• the acquisition of a meteorological information and data resource which would be of value to teachers long after the project had ended.

1.3 The planning stage of MetLinkInternational 1999

Planning of MetLinkInternational was delayed for several weeks in the autumn of 1998 while collaboration with a leading supplier of educational ICT (Information and Communications Technology) services and resources was explored. Discussions came to nothing, so, in mid-November, with all too little time left to implement MetLinkInternational in January and February 1999, the Royal Meteorological Society decided to fall back on the contingency plan, that the project be organized and directed by Malcolm Walker, with the assistance of John Harris. Malcolm had by now become the Society's Education Officer.

A shortcoming of MetNetEurope was that e-mail was used to exchange data sets, some of them very large. In the early stages of the project, sets were simply incorporated in e-mail messages. Later, they were sent as Microsoft Excel attachments. The use of an on-line database into which participating teachers and pupils could enter their observations would, it was considered, overcome the shortcoming. Accordingly, the Royal Meteorological Society's Webmaster, Roger Brugge of Reading University's Meteorology Department, was asked if he would devise such a database. He readily agreed to do so and designed a facility which could be used not only for recording data but also for searching by school and date. The other basic features of this facility were as follows:

• observations were stored in comma-separated format, so that they could easily be imported into a spreadsheet package such as Microsoft Excel;
• admission to the database to record observations needed a password, but data could be read by anyone with web access. Each school was required to use a different password, this being a contact e-mail address that had been registered with Roger.

The URL for gaining access to the database was:

http://www.met.rdg.ac.uk/~brugge/cgi-bin/metlink.cgi

and the database was designed to update itself every hour, on the hour.

The organizers of MetLinkInternational decided that e-mail would be used exclusively for communications other than data transfer. No provision for ftp-transfer was made.

2 MetLinkInternational 1999

There were three phases:

• the contact phase, Monday 11 to Friday 22 January, when teachers and their pupils exchanged information about themselves, their schools, their courses and their instruments;
• the active phase, Monday 25 January to Friday 5 February, during which observations were exchanged;
• the review phase, the following three weeks, during which teachers and their pupils considered the observations they had exchanged.

These dates had long been advertised on the MetNetEurope website, and several of the schools which took part in the pilot project had built involvement in MetLinkInternational into their work schedules for the academic year 1998-99.

2.2 Recruitment

Once the decision to proceed with MetLinkInternational had been made (in mid-November 1998), recruitment became an urgent matter. A modest and rather arbitrary target of twenty to twenty-five schools was set, the only rationale being that this number represented a doubling of the numbers taking part in MetNetEurope! Recruitment was by invitation and carried out largely by e-mail.

Only schools in Europe and Africa were invited to participate. This was partly because the inconvenience of substantial time-zone differences was avoided by restricting participation to schools in Europe and Africa and partly because the contrast between winter in Europe and summer in southern Africa was expected to add both interest and educational value to the project. Another reason for not attempting to recruit schools in North America or Australia was that meteorological societies in those parts of the world have for some time used the Internet to very good effect for educational purposes.

The following were invited to participate:

• Schools which took part in MetNetEurope. Eight of the twelve accepted the invitation.
• Other schools which expressed an interest in being part of MetLinkInternational.
• Schools recommended by MetNetEurope participants and by a number of contacts, such as Pål Kirkeby Hansen, an education lecturer in Oslo.
• Schools which supplied an e-mail address when they responded to the surveys of meteorological teaching requirements carried out by the Royal Meteorological Society in 1997 and 1998. Two surveys were carried out, one of the Society's School Corporate Members, the other of teachers in primary schools in selected areas of the UK.
• Schools selected from on-line lists of schools with e-mail addresses and websites. Lists of state and independent schools in the United Kingdom were used, as well as lists of international and other schools in Europe and Africa. The schools selected were, for the most part, those which appeared from their websites to be particularly interested in environmental matters.
• The school on Tristan da Cunha, chosen because of its remote mid-ocean location.

MetLinkInternational was publicised on the Royal Meteorological Society's stand at the Association for Science Education's resources exhibition held at Reading University in the first week of January, but time was by then too short to recruit any more participants. Many visitors to the stand nevertheless showed considerable interest in the project.

About eighty schools were invited to participate and twenty-six accepted. Many schools never replied. Of those which did, some commented that they might have taken part had the lead-time been longer. Teachers in the United Kingdom advised that recruitment of British schools should be started in May and June, as it is then that they plan their programmes of work for the following academic year.

Once again, as for MetNetEurope, Dave Shaw, Ross Reynolds and Steve Dorling agreed to serve as volunteer meteorological professionals, to act in advisory capacities to both organizers and participants.

Besides Malcolm Walker, John Harris, Roger Brugge, Dave Shaw, Ross Reynolds, Steve Dorling and the teachers and pupils of the 26 participating schools, the only others actively involved in MetLinkInternational were a teacher and pupils of George Watson's College in Edinburgh and a group of Year 9 pupils of Withington Girls' School in Manchester. They were unable to participate fully by supplying observations but wished, all the same, to be part of the project. Accordingly, they were granted observer status and sent all communications during the project's active and review phases. Peter Clarke of The Met.Office's Education Service took a close interest in the project from the summer of 1998 onwards.

2.3 The contact phase

In the first request for information, sent by Malcolm Walker on 5 January 1999, participants were asked to provide the following before the end of the contact phase:

• The name and postal address of their school and any other information about their school that may be of interest.
• The names of all teachers who would be involved and the subjects taught by those teachers.
• The names and ages of the pupils who would be involved.
• The school's geographical co-ordinates and height above sea level.
• Other information about the school's location (in a town or village, on the coast, in an agricultural area, etc.).
• The time observations would be made (the same time each day, if possible).
• Information about where observations would be made.
• A list of instruments that would be used.

Participants were also asked to:

• describe the weather normally experienced in their part of the world in late January and early February;
• test the on-line database and report any difficulties to Malcolm Walker.

In addition, Malcolm included a full list of the participants' e-mail addresses and suggested that the use of distribution lists would facilitate exchange of information.

The schools which took part in MetLinkInternational 1999 are listed in Table 1, along with the ages of the children involved. Full details of the schools are given in Annex 2, apart from the schools' URLs, which can be found on the MetLinkInternational website. The schools which took part in MetNetEurope are marked with an asterisk in Table 1.

TABLE 1 The schools which took part in MetLinkInternational 1999
SCHOOL	COUNTRY	AGE IN YEARS
Achille Ferris Primary School	Malta	8-9
American School, Antananarivo	Madagascar	10-13
American School, near Bilbao *	Spain	12-13
Banani International Secondary School, Chibombo	Zambia	13-15
Bedales School, Petersfield, Hampshire	United Kingdom	15-16
Bor's School, Bor, near Värnamo *	Sweden	15
Bryanston School, Blandford, Dorset *	United Kingdom	13-14
Casterton Community College, Rutland	United Kingdom	12
Eno Primary School, Eno	Finland	12
Gordon's School, near Woking, Surrey	United Kingdom	13-15
Institut Vidal I Barraquer, Tarragona	Spain	17-19
James Gillespie's High School, Edinburgh *	United Kingdom	15
Kristelig Gymnasium, Oslo	Norway	15-16
Larne Grammar School, Larne, County Antrim	United Kingdom	12-14
Northamptonshire Grammar School, Northampton	United Kingdom	16-17
Pennar Junior School, Pembroke Dock, Pembrokeshire	United Kingdom	7-8 & 10-11
Peterhouse, near Marondera *	Zimbabwe	16
Pinewood School, near Swindon, Wiltshire *	United Kingdom	11-12
Radley College, Abingdon, Oxfordshire *	United Kingdom	14-15
St Mary's School, Edinburgh of the Seven Seas	Tristan da Cunha	13-15
St Patrick's Christian Brothers' College, Bulawayo	Zimbabwe	14-15
St Peter & St Paul Primary School, Chaldon, Surrey	United Kingdom	6-7
South Farnham Junior School, Farnham, Surrey	United Kingdom	10-11
Vestby Videregående Skole, Vestby, near Oslo	Norway	17
Vora-Oravais-Maxmo Hogstadieskola, Vora *	Finland	13-16
Wells Cathedral School, Wells, Somerset	United Kingdom	16-17

* The schools marked with an asterisk took part in MetNetEurope

During the week of 18-22 January, Malcolm Walker sent all participants four contact messages.

The first message, sent on 18 January, provided the names and affiliations of the volunteer meteorological professionals and encouraged teachers to address technical queries to these persons. It also encouraged teachers to correspond directly with teachers in other MetLink schools. Malcolm said that he would be delighted if an outcome of the project was that e-mail pen-friendships developed. He asked teachers and pupils to comment on MetLinkInternational as the project progressed and to send images to him electronically for possible inclusion on the project's website. In the event, pictures were received from several schools and many were displayed on the website. More than that, the schools in Malta and Sweden produced their own MetLink websites by the end of the active phase, the URLs being as follows:

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Oracle/6505/metlink.html

http://www.varnamo.se/bor/metlink99_english.html

The main MetLinkInternational website was maintained and developed by John Harris, and its URL was:

http://www.rmplc.co.uk/eduweb/sites/radgeog/MetNetEur/MetNetEur.html

Contact message 2

In the second contact message, sent on 19 January, Malcolm suggested a number of MetLink themes.

The first of his suggestions was that teachers might investigate how carefully their pupils listened to weather forecasts. It might be an interesting exercise, he suggested, to tape the weather forecast each morning and compare what was said with (a) what the pupils thought was said and (b) what the weather actually was!

The second of Malcolm's suggestions was that MetLink participants might investigate the extent to which weather observations received from participating schools were consistent with expectations for the time of year. There was, he pointed out, a considerable climatic contrast between Scandinavia and southern Africa in January and February. Would it be surprising, he asked, if a temperature of 15°C were recorded in Finland during the next two or three weeks? Would it be remarkable if a wind speed of 80 km/h occurred in Pembrokeshire? Would it be surprising if snow fell in Zimbabwe?

Malcolm's third suggestion was that teachers and their pupils might concentrate on the type of precipitation falling at their school and other participating schools. They might address a number of questions. Was the precipitation hail, snow, rain, drizzle, freezing rain or freezing drizzle? What type of snow was it? How big were the drops of rain? Was the precipitation frontal, convective or orographic? Was the precipitation tropical summer rain? Was the rain associated with the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ)?

Malcolm's fourth suggestion was that opportunities existed for differences of weather between localities to be studied. In the southern part of the British Isles, for instance, there were several participating schools. Tracking the passage of fronts across Wales and southern England should, therefore, be possible. Differences of weather between the British Isles and southern Europe could also be explored. If the weather was wet and windy in the British Isles, as it had been all too often recently, was it fine and sunny in Spain and Malta? What differences of weather occurred between stations in southern Africa? What variations of weather occurred between the five participating schools in Scandinavia? Malcolm pointed out that Admiral FitzRoy, when he started producing weather forecasts for the UK in the early 1860s, did not have at his disposal observations from many more stations than were involved in MetLinkInternational. When compiling forecasts in early 1862, for example, he used observations from twenty British stations and five on the continent of Europe. Could we, Malcolm asked, make sensible forecasts of the weather for the UK from the observations supplied by the schools participating in MetLinkInternational?

Contact message 3

In the third contact message, sent on 21 January, Malcolm passed on a suggestion contributed by a teacher, that MetLink participants might consider how climate affected them. Did they, for example, heat their homes in January and February? If so, how did they heat them? For how long a period during the year was it necessary to heat them? Were there any parts of the MetLinkInternational world where the heating of homes was never necessary? What design features did homes have for coping with climate? In Scandinavia, for example, was the slope of the roof important in respect of snow accumulation? This message yielded several responses, from which MetLink participants learned something of clothing and heating requirements in January and February in Malta, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Scandinavia.

Contact message 4

Contact Message No.4, also sent on 21 January, was devoted entirely to sources of meteorological information on the World Wide Web (WWW). It contained many URLs which Malcolm considered useful or of interest to MetLink participants, among them the URLs of weblink lists such as those maintained by Roger Brugge (http://www.met.rdg.ac.uk/~brugge/) and Steve Dorling (http://www.uea.ac.uk/~e870/weather.html). The URLs of sites from which educational material could be obtained were provided, too, along with the URLs of the World Meteorological Organization, a number of national meteorological services and sites from which synoptic charts, satellite images and real-time weather data could be obtained.

A further contact message

A further contact message, sent on 28 January, invited MetLink participants to provide information about water supplies, water usage and the effects of weather on transport in their part of the world. Were restrictions on water consumption necessary on the islands of Malta and Tristan da Cunha, for example, and what uses were made of water, other than drinking it and using it for various industrial purposes? This message, like Contact Message No.3, produced several responses, from which a great deal of interesting information was derived, in particular about water supplies, water usage and weather-related transport problems in Malta, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Scandinavia.

Problems

During the contact phase of MetLinkInternational, one or two problems were addressed.

A couple of participants could not easily enter observations into the database themselves, so Malcolm agreed to enter them himself. In the case of Tristan da Cunha, the reason was that the Internet link to the island by satellite cost about £5 per minute. The cheapest option for the island's school was to transmit their observations by e-mail each day, thus avoiding the on-line time involved in using the database. The reason why Malcolm agreed to enter data for a school in southern Africa was that their telephone link was unreliable and WWW transfer rates by means of it almost impossibly slow. A school in the UK found at the start of the active phase that the database would not record the observations they entered. This was odd, as no problem had been encountered when the school tested the database two weeks earlier. No solution to the problem was found, despite the best endeavours of Roger Brugge, so the school's observations were sent to Malcolm by e-mail each day for entry into the database.

The matter of how barometric pressure should be recorded was also addressed during the contact phase. Participants were informed that pressure readings should be reduced to sea level, and advice was given on how to carry out the reduction. Participants were advised, too, that they should check their barometer settings by contacting a nearby meteorological station. For some schools in southern Africa, reducing pressure values to sea level was a serious issue, as their height above sea level was close to 1 km.

2.4 The active phase

During the active phase of MetLinkInternational, ten sets of observations were received from most schools, one set for each school day of each week (i.e. Monday to Friday). From several schools, observations were also received on Saturday 30 and Sunday 31 January. One school (Chaldon) sent weather reports twice a day most days. Malcolm Walker made observations at the Royal Meteorological Society each day and entered them in the database.

Some schools entered their observations into the database almost immediately. Others waited until a convenient time, sometimes the lunch break, sometimes the end of the school day, sometimes, even, the next day. More than one school did not have Internet access and participated in MetLinkInternational only because the teachers involved were prepared to use their home facilities (which included printing e-mail messages and MetLink website material for their pupils). At one school (Bilbao), difficulties arose because of teacher sickness, including sickness of the supply teachers who were meant to provide cover! The weather observations were, nevertheless, made each day but not entered into the database for several days because the priority in the school during this time was keeping the school functioning.

At the end of each school day of the active phase (i.e. Monday to Friday each week), Malcolm wrote a review of the day's weather, and during the evening of Sunday 31 January he wrote a brief review of the weekend's weather. In these reviews, he referred to satellite images and to charts showing isobars and fronts and discussed the weather in each MetLink region in relation to synoptic-scale pressure patterns, ITCZ activity, local factors, etc. In addition, he provided predictions of weather for each region for the following day, using for the purpose forecast charts available via the WWW.

25 January

On the first day of the active phase, history was made. Observations were received from Tristan da Cunha. Never before had current weather observations been received from this island in the middle of the South Atlantic. The first day of the active phase was notable, too, because temperatures had fallen below -40°C overnight in northern Scandinavia. Heavy thundershowers developed over Zimbabwe and Madagascar during the day and a cold front crossed southern parts of England and Wales. In an e-mail message to MetLink participants that was separate from the main review of the day, Malcolm described his own experiences of this front as he drove the 170 km from Cardiff to Reading that morning.

26 January

On the second day, 26 January, excitement mounted as temperatures fell even lower in northern Scandinavia, with a minimum of -48°C recorded at Ivalo, only 3°C short of the lowest temperature ever recorded in Finland. The weather was exciting in southern parts of the British Isles, too, with frequent showers of hail in many areas and gusts of more than 60 km/h in Pembrokeshire. At Petersfield, close to Bedales School, a squall that probably contained a tornado brought down trees and power lines, blocked roads and badly damaged a house. In Madagascar, storms caused flooding and brought down telephone lines, so preventing the American School of Antananarivo from transmitting their observations that day.

One or two teething problems were addressed on the second day. MetLink participants were asked not to include units when adding their observations to the database and reminded that wind speeds should be reported in km/h. Malcolm also enquired as to why some schools reported maximum and minimum temperatures but not the current temperature. This remained a mystery, as no-one provided an answer and the schools concerned continued to omit from their daily reports values of current temperature.

27 January

On 27 January, MetLink participants learned that temperatures had fallen as low as -51°C at Kittila, northern Finland, and a memorable e-mail was received from Wili (Alf Wilhelmsson) of the MetLink school at Vora. He reported that the low temperatures had caused the pressures of car tyres to drop. As a result, the tyres had, as he put it, "frozen in a square form", so that "the cars which still ran behaved like rabbits or kangaroos". Part of this quotation subsequently appeared in The Independent, a British daily newspaper, on 3 February 1999, in an article about the cold weather in Scandinavia. Wili was, however, described as a "UK Met.Office correspondent". Neither the Royal Meteorological Society nor MetLinkInternational was mentioned.

Elsewhere on 27 January, the weather was comparatively unexciting. Indeed, a grumble was received from James Gillespie's High School that the weather in Edinburgh had so far proved "uninspiring"! A temporary problem on the third day was that the Reading University mail server was very slow, as a result of which updating of the database was not occurring on the hour after observations were entered but, instead, taking several hours.

28 January

On 28 January, Christer Helander of Bor's School informed MetLink participants that the cold air had now reached southern Sweden, producing a temperature of -14°C at his school that morning. Malcolm pointed out to participants that mercury freezes at -38.9°C, so mercury-in-glass thermometers could not be used for measuring the extremely low temperatures that had been occurring in northern Scandinavia. Alcohol-in-glass thermometers had to be used.

Malcolm began his report for 28 January with a mention of the calm, sunny, pleasantly warm weather reported that day from Tristan da Cunha. This was, he said, consistent with the island lying close to the centre of an anticyclone. Over southern Africa, he went on, there were many clusters of cumulonimbus clouds, which was not unusual for the time of year. Over the coast of south-west Africa, he further pointed out, there was a clear strip parallel to the coast and extending some way inland, which appeared to be associated with an extensive sea-breeze circulation. The cold in Scandinavia was not as intense as on previous days, though minimum temperatures of below -30°C had again occurred over a wide area of northern Sweden and Finland. There were northerly winds over Spain and southern France, so Malcolm wondered if the mistral was blowing down the Rhône Valley. No-one responded to this speculation.

29 January

In his review of 29 January, the fifth day of the active phase, Malcolm drew attention to the showers, unusually cool weather and strong north-westerly winds that Malta had experienced that day, in association with an area of low pressure centred over the Ionian Sea. He also mentioned that a broad coastal strip of Namibia was again virtually free of cloud, leading him to repeat his suggestion of the previous day, that a sea-breeze circulation was probably responsible. The ITCZ, Malcolm noted, was rather more clearly defined than it had been earlier in the week but was still rather patchy. This component of the atmospheric circulation in low latitudes, he pointed out, was rarely as continuous as school textbooks showed it. Temperatures in Scandinavia were higher than they had been of late, but the weather was, as he put it, "still bitterly cold by most people's standards". An e-mail message from Wili in Vora, received by Malcolm on 29 January and passed on to all MetLink participants, contained the information that Finland consumed more energy the previous day than it had ever consumed in one day before. Wili also passed on a news report from his country that "Finns, normally very slow starters when it comes to conversation with strangers, had probably lowered their level to begin to talk with each other in buses and trains". People were talking much more, he said, "especially about the cold weather".

On 29 January, Roger Brugge passed on to Malcolm a review of severe weather worldwide which he had compiled. This showed that Scandinavia had not been alone in experiencing severe weather. Heavy snow and freezing rain had affected many parts of the United States, and tornadoes had caused havoc in Arkansas and Tennessee. The review (which Malcolm passed on to MetLink participants) mentioned that a new national low-temperature record for Finland had been set on the 28th, with a temperature of -51.5°C at Kittila. It mentioned, too, that the temperature had fallen to almost -56°C that same night at a village on the Kola Peninsula, near the Russia-Norway border.

The weekend of 30/31 January

Over the weekend of 30/31 January, exciting weather continued to occur in MetLink locations, with hailstones a centimetre in diameter falling on Malta on the Saturday morning. In an e-mail message sent on 31 January, Alfred Mifsud of Achille Ferris Primary School reported that his children "did not believe their eyes". In his words, "they had never seen so much hail in their lives". Meanwhile, the temperature in southern Sweden rose over the weekend from -40°C to +7°C. This change brought two problems, as Christer Helander of Bor's School reported: dense fog occurred and the snow that was lying became very heavy. Trees toppled or snapped, and some of them fell onto high-voltage cables, causing power failures.

1 February

In his review of 1 February, Malcolm provided brief explanations for the weekend's weather events in Malta and Sweden and drew attention to a couple of meteorological 'battle areas'. Over northern Scandinavia, he said, a battle was taking place between very cold air over north-west Russia and much milder air to the west. "Would the cold air win and turn the cars back into kangaroos?", he asked. Near Tristan da Cunha, too, a battle of sorts was taking place, between high pressure not far away and the fronts which had brought a lot of rain to the island in the past couple of days. Would the high pressure win, he asked, or would the unsettled weather continue to give the island rain? Over the British Isles, there was now a noteworthy meteorological feature, an anticyclone with a central pressure as high as 1043 mb. At Pennar, Larne and Edinburgh, this anticyclone had brought sunny weather, but at other MetLink locations in the UK overcasts of low, grey, stratocumulus cloud had occurred.

On 1 February, Steve Dorling sent a weather report to all MetLink participants. In this, he mentioned that the severe weather in Scandinavia was of interest not only to schools but also to his meteorology undergraduates, with whom he had discussed the meteorological situation responsible for the intense cold. He also reported that his daughter, aged 3, had learned to gauge the outside temperature, and thus decide which coat she needed to wear, by observing the direction the smoke from local chimneys was blowing. She was also colouring in a 'Weather Tree', on which each leaf represented the weather each morning on her journey to the nursery. Steve mentioned, too, that he had been browsing the MetLinkInternational website and been much impressed by the Students' Guide to Meteorology and Climate developed by King's School, Worcester. He recommended MetLink participants to inspect the guide by visiting:

http://www.ksw.org.uk/atmosphere/pages/index.html

2-5 February

During the rest of the MetLink active phase, the weather was unremarkable, compared with the weather of the previous week. High pressure developed over the South Atlantic near Tristan da Cunha, winter loosened its grip on Scandinavia, the high pressure over southern parts of the British Isles slipped away southwards, the ITCZ resembled the textbook model for a few days and cumulonimbus activity continued over Zambia, Zimbabwe and Madagascar. Gales occurred over Scotland and Northern Ireland, however, and caused some disruption to normal life. As George Meldrum of James Gillespie's High School reported on 4 February, ferries to the northern isles (Orkney and Shetland) were cancelled or delayed, several roads in the Highlands of Scotland were blocked by fallen trees and the road bridges over the Forth and Tay estuaries had to be closed for a while. The föhn effect occurred over eastern parts of Scotland on 3 February, lifting temperatures to 14°C in Aberdeen and 13°C around the Moray Firth. Malcolm sent messages about the gales and the föhn occurrence to all MetLink participants.

On 4 February, purely for interest and information, to show MetLink participants something of the detail available in weather broadcasts in the UK, Malcolm attached to his review of the day's weather a copy of an inshore waters weather forecast (obtained from http://www.met-office.gov.uk/sec3/sec3.html).

On 5 February, the last day of the active phase, Malcolm again drew attention to the likelihood of the mistral blowing through the Rhône Gap and asked if any MetLink participants had any information about winds in the area. This request elicited a response from Brian Green of The Met.Office, who passed on synoptic observations from southern France which confirmed that the mistral was indeed blowing on 5 February. Malcolm forwarded the observations to all MetLink participants.

Also on 5 February, Ross Reynolds sent a message to all participants. In this, he first invited them to consider how heavy clouds are and then proceeded to explain how to calculate the weights of clouds. As he put it: "clouds weight a lot!". Another report of notable weather events around the world was received from Roger Brugge on 5 February and forwarded to all MetLink participants.

Other information

During and immediately after the active phase of the project, Malcolm received from MetLink participants many more e-mail messages than have been mentioned above, and he forwarded most of them to all other participants. They covered a range of topics, including wind chill, the tramontana, water supplies on Tristan da Cunha, the practicalities of measuring snow depth and the optimum slope of roofs to cope safely with heavy snowfalls.

Unsolicited data sets were received, too. Observations from an automatic weather station maintained at Felsted School in Essex were sent by Christopher Dawkins, one of the school's teachers, and a set of daily data for the fortnight of the active period was sent by a British teacher currently on an exchange for a year in Whangarei, New Zealand. The teacher, David Fellows, is headmaster of Roose Primary School, Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria.

These unsolicited data sets and a number of e-mail messages received by Malcolm indicated that people other than MetLink participants were taking an interest in the project. Further evidence that this was the case came from Mike Lewis of Northamptonshire Grammar School, who reported on 29 January that the server statistics for his school's weather station website showed that requests for their data had increased markedly since the beginning of the active phase. As mentioned in Annex 2, the school maintains a professional climatological station.

Further evidence of outside interest in MetLinkInternational has come from the statistics of 'hits' on Roger Brugge's web pages. Between 16 January and 15 April, there were 1,222 'hits' on the MetLink database, 1,057 of these occurring between 16 January and 15 February. The number of hits on his MetLink home page between January and April was 1,071, with 499 of these occurring between 16 January and 15 February. Statistics of hits on the Radley College MetLink pages are not available.

2.5 The evolving website

The MetLinkInternational website was maintained and developed by John Harris and evolved from the website he developed for MetNetEurope. Indeed, it used the same URL:

http://www.rmplc.co.uk/eduweb/sites/radgeog/MetNetEur/MetNetEur.html

The site grew daily. As schools were recruited, their positions were added to the maps. As school details were received, the page containing these details was updated. A link to the MetLink database was provided.

Two synoptic charts were added each day, these being:

• a Met.Office synoptic analysis for the North Atlantic and north-west Europe, obtained from http://www-imk.physik.uni-karlsruhe.de/~gmueller/pics/bracka.gif

• a South African Weather Bureau synoptic analysis for the South Atlantic, obtained from http://cirrus.sawb.gov.za/www/ship/ship.gif

METEOSAT images were added, too, being obtained from a Nottingham University site:

http://www.ccc.nottingham.ac.uk/~cczsteve/updates.shtml

Other information on the MetLink site included the following:

• the aims and objectives of the project;
• the dates of the project's phases;
• a list of useful websites;
• images and reports contributed by MetLink participants;
• the daily reviews written by Malcolm Walker;
• the reviews written by Steve Dorling and Ross Reynolds;
• the reviews of worldwide weather events compiled by Roger Brugge.

A link to ZimbMet, a project similar to MetLinkInternational, was added on 7 January. This project, for schools in southern Africa, was co-ordinated by Andy Griggs of Peterhouse in Zimbabwe, and its URL was:

http://www.rmplc.co.uk/eduweb/sites/radgeog/zimbmet/zimhome.html

The logo which appeared on the MetLink web pages was designed by Malcolm Walker.

Access to the MetLinkInternational web pages was available not only to project participants but also to non-participants and has remained available to all since the end of the project.

2.6 Publicity

A number of schools gained publicity for their involvement in MetLinkInternational.

The issue of Diari de Tarragona published on 24 January contained, on page 17, an article entitled "Anticiclones a través de Internet: El Vidal I Barraquer, en un proyecto meteorológico". This featured the involvement of Josep Camps and his students in MetLinkInternational and contained two photographs, one of students taking readings of meteorological instruments, the other of students entering their observations in the MetLink database. The opening paragraph of the article read as follows:

Los alumnos de la asignatura de meteorologia del Institut Vidal I Barraquer de Tarragona, coordinados por los profesores del Aula Experimental de Meteorologia, participan en el proyecto MetLink Internacional, un intercambio de datos meteorológicos a través de Internet, proyecto que auspicia la Royal Meteorological Society.

Thus, the project and the Society were fully acknowledged.

Josep and a number of colleagues plan to publish a CD-ROM called "Meteorology for the School" which they intend to distribute free of charge to all schools in Catalonia. This will contain material (including data and graphs) from MetNetEurope and MetLinkInternational.

Wells Cathedral School gained publicity more than once. A feature on their participation in MetLinkInternational was broadcast by BBC Radio Bristol on 1 February and an article about the participation was published in The Western Daily Press on 3 February. Further publicity was gained on 7 February, when Page 164 of BBC West's Ceefax coverage was devoted to the school's involvement in MetLink.⁽¹⁾ The newspaper article, entitled "Outlook fine for school's forecast", contained two photographs, one of a pupil with an anemometer, the other of several pupils with their teacher, Dr Andrew Hignell. The article focused upon the interest of Andrew and his pupils in weather forecasting and also mentioned their interest in global warming.

(1). Ceefax is a television service which provides text pages on screen accessed by means of the numbered buttons on television remote control units.

A visit made by Malcolm Walker to Pinewood School on 1 February was recorded in an article and photograph published on page 2 of Swindon's Evening Advertiser the following day. The photograph showed Malcolm with a group of pupils and the article mentioned not only MetLink but also the Royal Meteorological Society's 150^th anniversary, to be celebrated in the year 2000.

A visit made by Malcolm to St Peter & St Paul Primary School in Chaldon on 5 February was recorded in two Surrey newspapers, the County Border News on 11 February and The Caterham and District Advertiser on 12 February. Photographs of Malcolm and Chaldon pupils appeared in both newspapers, along with extended captions.

On 10 February, The Petersfield Post carried a small article about MetLinkInternational and the involvement of Bedales School in it.

The pupils of Achille Ferris Primary School who were involved in MetLinkInternational wrote about the project in their school newspaper and gained wider publicity for the project through the article entitled "Icy-cold Malta gets attention of foreign schoolchildren" which appeared in The People on Sunday, a Maltese newspaper, on 7 February. A treat for the Achille Ferris pupils was the visit they made on 27 January with Alfred Mifsud, their teacher, to the Meteorological Office at Malta's Luqa Airport. A report of the visit was published in their school's newspaper.

In the UK, a number of approaches by newspaper, radio and television journalists to schools and the Royal Meteorological Society appeared promising but were not followed up. This was disappointing.

2.7 Visits to schools

During the active phase of MetLinkInternational, Malcolm Walker visited three of the participating schools, all primary schools within easy reach of Reading. He visited:

• Pinewood School, near Swindon, on 1 February;
• South Farnham Junior School on 4 February;
• St Peter & St Paul Primary School, Chaldon, on 5 February.

At all of these schools, he met and chatted with pupils and watched them make the day's weather observations.

At Chaldon, he also met Ian Currie, a meteorologist, author and local radio and television personality, who launched MetLinkInternational for the pupils and teachers of the school at Chaldon on 25 January and visited the school again on 5 February, the last day of the project's active phase. On both occasions, a number of parents of pupils attended, and on 5 February reporters and photographers from local newspapers also attended. Many photographs of Malcolm and Ian with pupils were taken. The pupils, the youngest taking part in MetLink, had made a number of instruments, including an anemometer that used sandwich boxes as rotating 'cups'. Colourful wind socks had also been made by the pupils, and the teachers had designed a board game which deserves a mention. The board consisted of a plastic sheet marked with squares of side about 25 cm. Some of the squares contained weather symbols. The pupils programmed a robot to move over the board from 'Start' to 'Home'. If the robot stopped on a weather symbol, the pupil had to start again and the teacher commented on the weather corresponding to that square.

A reporter and a photographer from a Swindon newspaper covered Malcolm's visit to Pinewood School and several photographs were taken of Malcolm with pupils gathered around the school's weather station.

Malcolm took photographs at all three schools and displayed one from each school on the Royal Meteorological Society's stand at the Geographical Association's educational resources exhibition held in Manchester from 7 to 9 April 1999. Visitors to the stand showed considerable interest in MetLinkInternational. Whether or not this interest is converted into participation in MetLinkInternational 2000 remains to be seen.

2.8 The art competition

On 27 January, Malcolm informed the four British primary schools taking part in the MetLinkInternational project that the Royal Meteorological Society's calendar would be a special one, to mark the Society's 150^th anniversary. Whereas the calendar usually contained one picture per month - an appropriate photograph of meteorological interest - the calendar for 2000 would contain, each month, in addition to the main picture, two smaller pictures. In July, it was hoped, one of these smaller pictures would be a reproduction of a weather picture painted by a child. Accordingly, the four schools were invited to submit, during the week beginning 8 February, five pictures painted by children taking part in MetLinkInternational. The Society would choose one to appear on the calendar.

Three schools submitted pictures and the one painted by Sarah Davies of South Farnham Primary School was judged the best. Two other pictures were considered worthy of publication on the back cover of the Royal Meteorological Society's monthly magazine, Weather.

3 The Review Phase of MetLinkInternational 1999

On 6 February, Malcolm sent all MetLinkInternational participants three messages, entitled, respectively:

• 'MetLinkInternational Review Phase - Educational';
• 'MetLinkInternational Review Phase - Technical';
• 'MetLinkInternational Review Phase - Analysis'.

In a preamble to the first of these, he thanked everyone for supporting the project so energetically and enthusiastically and hoped that no-one had drowned in e-mail messages. Thus, he recognised an aspect of the project that had been mentioned to him by a number of participants, but certainly not as a complaint. A great many e-mail messages had been generated, not only by the project's organizers but also by the participants. Malcolm said that it was never the intention that teachers would make use of all the information generated by the project all at once. Rather, he said, the intention was that some of the information would be used immediately, with the rest forming a resource which could be dipped into during the months or even years ahead. He hoped there had been something in the project for everyone.

After the preamble, he asked a series of questions, to which question by question answers were received from twelve schools, helpful general comments from most of the rest. It was evident that most, if not all, schools had greatly enjoyed the project. Indeed, considerable enthusiasm had been evident throughout. The cold weather in Finland and the involvement of the school on Tristan da Cunha were the aspects of the project which appear to have made most impact on participants. During the contact phase, children at a primary school in the UK became excited at trying to locate the places where the schools were situated. When her own school appeared on a MetLinkInternational website map, the headteacher remarked in an e-mail to Malcolm that her school was difficult to find on a local A to Z street plan but now appeared on a world map!

The questions and many of the answers are given below and are quoted verbatim. The schools which answered question by question did not all answer all questions and some rolled the answers to more than one question into one answer. To some questions, rather similar answers were received from different schools. Therefore, a representative sample of answers has been given below.

Question 1

Answers

• We haven't as yet used any of the data from other schools formally.
• None as yet. The group we worked with is the final-year GCSE group and they are busy focusing on exams.
• Some. Visited various websites. Discussed purpose and implications of MetLink and information on participants.
• A lot of the data from older participants was extremely interesting and we were able to be selective with what we extracted and used. We took more than we would probably use or take another year - but it was a learning process for us too and we would be more discerning next time!!
• The data has been used both in ordinary Geography weather lessons and by the Grade 12 class in their spatial graphical and map comparisons of weather conditions for various places. This has been done in their preparations for their final examinations at the end of this year.
• We have used practically all the information, especially the temperatures, pressures and rainfall readings. I found it hard to digest all the information. So what I did was print it all and file it under the following headings: Scandinavia, Africa and the South Atlantic, Europe/UK and Spain. That made things easier to handle and organise. As the students were engaged in another project during the contact phase, I simply explained MetLink to them in very general terms and referred them to a bulletin board display that I had set up outside my room. On it, I displayed enlarged copies of the maps from the website (plastified) and some of the introductory e-mails from some of the other schools joined to the maps with coloured threads. The students were especially fascinated by the information from Tristan and thrilled to be taking part in history in the making. It has been great to have real data to work with and I think that "talking about the weather" will be something the students will be able to do in a very informed way.
• All the interesting data on Finland and the other unusual happenings as it came in. Actual figures we will graph, etc. once we are back on target with classwork.
• We have so far used most of the data and converted to graphs. This is difficult for some stations where there are gaps in the data but there is still more than enough for useful comparison.
• The real-time information linked to exciting weather events proved highly motivating as a vehicle for the teaching of temperature differences.

Question 2

Answers

• I would probably focus on the temperature data, calculate means for the period and study regional variations in climate. Also rainfall, comparison of west/east totals over the period. The targetted group for this would be Year 9 (age 13-14).
• Analysis of variations in temperature linked to latitude, linking synoptic charts and satellite images to identify fronts, circulations, highs, lows, weather experienced and to check alongside your daily synopses.
• Little if truth be told. I will try to focus on hazard information.
• I intend to take this forward with a third-year class (secondary level) who are just starting a unit on Weather. The data will be used to show the relationship between day-to-day recordings and the changing synoptic chart for Europe. I also intend to back this up with satellite images. It is really useful to have a very recent data set and is especially significant for the pupils because they are including recordings from our own school.
• Temperature and rainfall mainly in simple graphs with the juniors, but I hope the A-level boys will also gain a lot from it and make use of much more of the data.⁽²⁾
• We will be comparing figures from the MetNet project of '98 with those of MetLink'99. So, in 2000, I would hope to do the same.
• The temperatures, to produce graphs for interpretation and comparison. A pre-requisite knowledge for the visit to Preston Montford Field Studies Centre.⁽³⁾

(2). A-level = Advanced Level of the General Certificate of Education, taken at the age of 17-18, after a two-year course of study, by students in England, Wales and Northern Ireland who choose to stay on at school after the statutory leaving age of 16. Some students in schools outside the UK also take British A-level examinations.

(3). This reply came from a British primary school which takes groups of children to the residential centre at Preston Montford, Shropshire, England.

Question 3

Answers

• Yes.
• Yes, although the mixed age groups have not been a major problem. Subdivision could be quite a nightmare to administer?
• It is nice to see the whole age-range participating. Perhaps you could have a common database for basic observations and then a number of specialist databases. We routinely make observations of over 20 variables daily. It would have been useful to compare things like sunshine totals, cloud types, visibility, etc., though I guess most schools would not have access to specialist equipment.
• Yes, with the facility to access all the information.
• Good idea, but I hope that we will be able to access the other schools' results.
• Yes. I think age groups would be a good idea - the amount of information we have had I've much enjoyed going through, but much is too detailed for our 14-15 year olds (they write a local public exam at the end of their second year and sadly much of this is irrelevant though much more interesting than the syllabus!). However, I would hate to miss out on any information as a result.
• Yes, grouping by educational level is a good idea. However, I hope this would not preclude any school having access to the exciting or exotic information such as Tristan da Cunha.
• It would have advantages to segregate schools by ages, but would you have a big enough sample for each category to collect enough data?

Question 4

Answers

• None, other than data collection.
• Learning to use the instruments. Graphing the results.
• Very little mainly because of the delays in getting (and sending) e-mails. All the new places have encouraged a much greater interest in atlas work than normal.
• We have been following the projects as outlined at the website, but intend to take this forward into synoptic analysis. Interesting and unusual data received during MetLink were transmitted to staff and pupils through bulletin announcements. These were communicated to the whole school population at morning registration.
• We downloaded (Dundee) satellite images for each day and used The Times's synoptic chart with them and identified major weather systems.
• Mainly the daily weather record, satellite images analysis and I have been running an intranet version of the whole MetLink site that can be browsed by students, off-line, at any time. I have also been posting the more relevant e-mails onto an internal Weather Conference on our e-mail system into which all students can tap.

See Annex 3 for details of MetLink projects carried out in two of the participating schools.

Question 5

Answers

• No specific use as yet.
• Mainly yet to be undertaken.
• We have expanded our network of schools who regularly receive our daily/monthly weather report.
• The main use so far has been to stimulate an interest in weather elsewhere and a lot of discussion has been involved.
• The project gave me an excellent opportunity to explain to pupils the usefulness of electronic data transmission and strengthened my arguments with the school management for an upgrade of my computing facility.

Question 6

Answers

• Our aim was to make daily weather observations and provide them for other participants. Our curriculum is planned a term in advance, so there has been no time available to take part fully in the project. Next year, I would like to run it as an extra-curricular club to allow greater scope for follow-up work.
• Aims have been achieved.
• I aimed to teach the children how to read and record weather information - achieved. I hoped to persuade the school to get the Internet up and running successfully and have all the computers networked. I failed, but it is in the pipeline.
• To stimulate a greater interest in weather observations and weather elsewhere - as we are almost totally restricted to a study of Southern Africa, the European data was fascinating to everyone, as was that from Tristan da Cunha. I think we made good headway here.

Question 7

Answers

• Very much so (even if some were a little reluctant to stand in a cold wind!).
• Very much, but they would have enjoyed it even more if they had had Internet access.
• They have enjoyed it very much and the data analysis will add to that.
• Students involved in data collection enjoyed the experience. We are presently investigating how we can improve links with European schools. This is very much languages orientated and it has been very useful to use MetLink to explain that other areas of the school can also have a part to play in this development.
• They have enjoyed the feeling of a real-time, global-scale project. Possibility of developing personal e-mail contacts with schools, e.g. Oslo.
• One teacher simply replied "Yes"!

Question 8

Answers

• Being part of an international project. E-mails from other schools.
• Your visit. [This from a school visited by Malcolm Walker!]
• The live element.
• The cold in Finland. [This from a school in Africa]
• One aspect I liked was the sharing of information of local specific events and regarding the school and its local weather. This led me to e-mail specific questions to other schools on such issues as automatic weather stations and the Mistral wind.

Question 9

Please provide details.

Answers

• It was not our specific aim to make it such. However, we have addressed most of the aspects listed.
• The art department and maths department displayed an interest. Next year, I will persuade others to join in, show more of an interest.
• Not as successful as it might have been because of e-mail problems, etc, so we still have a lot to do. However, now that I know what is involved, next year can only be better. [This from the school in Africa with an unreliable telephone link]
• IT handling of data will be covered, e-mail and conferencing, writing, graphing and analytical skills.

The second message, entitled 'MetLinkInternational Review Phase - Technical', contained eighteen questions.

Question 10

Answers

• No. [From most respondents]
• Not really. We have a hand-held anemometer which reads in knots, m/sec, km/hr and the Beaufort Scale, so whichever is needed we can do.
• Probably easier for most schools and students; encourages 'observational' skills.

Question 11

Answers

• mph, please.
• km/h preferred. [From several respondents]
• km/h seems to mean more to the boys than the others, but we also use observation as well, so they are familiar with the Beaufort Scale (a strategically-placed tree is a great help).
• My anemometer records in m/sec but the conversion is easy enough.

Question 12

Answers

• Yes. [From several respondents]
• Perhaps yes.
• Yes - or at least wet-bulb temperature.
• No. It's tricky to measure accurately and is one of the less useful indicators.

Question 13

Answers

• Yes. [From several respondents]
• We do read it every day, as a matter of fact.
• We measure relative humidity using wet and dry bulb thermometers. A software package converts the temperatures into RH. We also use a hair hygrograph to produce a continuous record. RH would be good to include, although there can be considerable variations over short periods of time and some instruments can be very inaccurate. I do know that Casella produce a very cheap wet-and-dry-bulb thermometer that could be suitable for schools.

Question 14

Answers

• Yes. [From several respondents]
• No, but the readings are much the same as those from the local met station, so I think it's fairly accurate.
• All our thermometers have Met.Office calibration certificates. We take temperature readings to 0.1°C. However, we make doubly sure of our temperature readings by having two screens (the large one contains the complete array of max, min, dry, wet thermometers and autographic instruments; the small screen has mounted max and min thermometers for comparison).

Question 15

Answers

• Yes. [From several respondents]
• Same instrument.
• Separate, yes.
• We have separate max, min, wet and dry thermometers. After recording observations, the re-set max and min thermometers are checked against the dry-bulb thermometer (in the manner given in the Observer's Handbook).
• All temperatures were read from a Six's thermometer, and current temperature always agreed with the dry-bulb thermometer.

Question 16

Answers

• Thank you for checking our readings. I wasn't certain they were correct.
• Here we have a major problem. We have a new aneroid barometer BUT it is a sea-level one (all you can get here). It reads far too high anyway, but having had it adjusted by the Airport Met.Office it now doesn't work at all! I have since discovered that the Science Department has a mercury barometer so it needs to be checked and then we can use it. [This from a school in Africa]
• Not very confident, although our equipment is two basic aneroids (checked against each other) and standardised on nearby official sites. We seemed to agree with the Royal Meteorological Society readings, mindful of the later time of day for the Reading figures.
• Digital unit from science department fluctuated and seemed a little low.
• I bought a new barometer before MetLink started, but even though I initially checked this against another instrument, I was getting some variability between the two and worried when the readings differed from our daily MetFax chart.
• We take our pressure readings from a Met.Office open-scale micro-barograph that is checked frequently against a Fortin-pattern mercury barometer. As is the practice at Met.Office auxiliary stations, we are now moving away from the mercury barometer to a precision aneroid barometer to bench-mark our readings. We don't have to check against other weather stations. In fact, many local schools check against us.

Question 17

Answers

• None. We are well used to this form of communication.
• Having to use my home computer because the school's server kept going down was not a satisfactory way to educate the children on the use of the net.
• We have one e-mail line and it is available between 0730 and 1200 generally, so this is a major problem. Our phone system is terrible (generally, not just the school) and is always worse in the rainy season. I have never had time to look at any of the websites, although one of the A-level boys hopes to do so.
• See Annex 4 for comments from John Harris.

Question 18

Answers

• No. [From several respondents]
• No problems. We missed a few days entering data into the database as we were rather stretched with our own activities.
• We haven't tried to use it. [This from the school in Africa with an unreliable telephone link]
• I tried a test run before the start of MetLink and everything seemed to work fine. I have no explanation for my later inability to enter data on the website, other than the fact that I am working from a Macintosh computer. I often have difficulty downloading attached documents created on a PC and am now in the process of persuading school managers that I need yet another computer. I am confident that a PC will be installed by the summer!
• Very few. It was brilliant and a great time-saver compared to the daily collating and mailing that I was doing last year at the end of each day. Please thank Roger Brugge, and hopefully continue the database and build a similar system for CloudWatch.⁽⁴⁾

(4). This is a reference to CloudWatchEurope, a Royal Meteorological Society 150^th anniversary project for the 11-16 age range, which is to run from 20 to 24 March 2000. Teachers and their pupils across Europe will observe clouds and precipitation two or three times a day for a week and relate what they observe to weather systems and atmospheric processes.

Question 19

Answers

• Only two replies to this question. One replied "None". The other reply is given in Annex 4.

Question 20

Answers

• Yes. [From several respondents]
• Yes - in fact I'm still sinking under the volume of data, suggestions, etc.
• The flood of data and communication was very impressive.
• Your daily summaries were excellent. There were some problems of stripping out returns and jpeg conversions before material could be uploaded to the website (sending as textfiles would hopefully have avoided this).

Question 21

Answers

• Yes. [From several respondents]
• No. [From one respondent]
• Open mind about this.
• We already have an 'Adopted Meteorologist'.
• A meteorologist would be useful in helping set up the project. Perhaps a 'phone link could be established as a help line. I have an excellent ICT co-ordinator and we've been on the Internet
• here at school for two years now. My staff would have needed more support without this. [This from a primary school in the UK]

Question 22

Answers

• No view.
• It would be nice to know that assistance and advice was at hand locally.
• I know someone who might be able to help. He was in charge of the local weather station for many years. [This reply from a school in Africa]

These were the only replies to this question.

Question 23

Answers

• The increased number of schools. [This from a school which took part in MetNetEurope]
• The constant inflow of fascinating information, comment, etc. from all over. Also the speed with which information came back - even if it often was a week later before we could actually get it.
• Involving students in using the equipment for a specific purpose and using the net to link to other schools.
• I think that running the website has added about four hours to an already busy day, but I feel that the results have made it all worthwhile. [This from John Harris]

Question 24

Answers

• A more straightforward Results/Data sheet. When I download and print it, I get a total jumble that I can understand but the children just can't make head or tail of. Either have weekends in or out - not some of each.
• No suggestions.
• I would like to see MetLink extend into North and South America. I have good contacts in schools in Pennsylvania and Lima who would be keen to join. I hope we can persuade some Australian school to come on board. I would desperately like to see more Scottish schools become involved, particularly some farther north and farther west.
• We need to think carefully about the administration and site management.

Question 25

Answers

• Certainly for some schools.
• No. [From two schools]
• Yes. [From several schools]

Question 26

Malcolm suggested, as a preamble to Q.25, that such a handbook might contain help on setting up and running a weather station, guidance on the making of observations, hints on how to relate weather observations to the current weather chart, and so on.

Answers

• Not really sure, but perhaps a bit on temperature and pressure adjustments, etc.
• Everything you mention, plus a full and perhaps extended copy of everything on the website.
• Brief but relevant hints on how to improve accuracy and consistency of results.

Question 27

Answers

• Both.
• Both. This is probably not so necessary in Europe, but with the problems here with electronic data a printed booklet would be a great help.
• On the website, also e-mailed. Not sure about printed.

In the third of the messages, entitled 'MetLinkInternational Review Phase - Analysis', Malcolm pointed out that the MetLink database contained many observations and asked: "What shall we do with them now?". He suggested that pupils might graph observations, relate them to weather systems, study day-to-day variations of weather elements and compare observations from place to place.

No-one replied specifically to this message (but see Annex 4).

3.2 Lessons learned

Many of the lessons learned have already been mentioned. Therefore, they need only be summarised here:

• Recruitment for MetLinkInternational in future should take place much earlier than for the 1999 project, preferably in May and June. Many schools would have gained even more from the project had they been able to integrate it into their work programmes at an earlier stage. One facet of this is that computer facilities in schools for particular subjects or projects may need to be booked well in advance, sometimes a term in advance.
• Advice on checking thermometers and barometers and reducing pressure readings to sea level needs to be clearer. A number of doubtful pressure and temperature readings appeared in the database. Perhaps schools might be encouraged in future to involve science teachers in the project, specifically to take responsibility for instrument usage.
• The volume of e-mail messages was too large for some schools to cope with. Digesting all the information was difficult for some.
• As the project grows, grouping of schools may well be necessary. However, all information gathered through the project should be accessible through the website, so that all information is available to all participants. A review of each day's weather might be sent to all participants and separate educational reviews be sent to individual groups.
• British teachers not involved in MetLinkInternational 1999 have commented to Malcolm Walker and others that a great attraction of the project is that it helps deliver not only Geography but also several other parts of the National Curriculum, especially IT and data handling. The organizers and participants of MetLink were aware of this. Nevertheless, greater focus on the cross-curricular nature of the project should be made when endeavouring to recruit MetLink participants in 2000 and thereafter.
• The database worked very well, but a few presentational improvements could perhaps be made (see Annex 4).
• Availability of e-mail and web-access in schools is increasing rapidly. In the next few years, as in 1999, the organizers of MetLink can expect some teachers to be feeling their way with Internet facilities or coping with uncertain telephone connections, while others will be very familiar with the full range of web facilities. The organization of MetLinkInternational should reflect these variations of provision.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

PRINTED VERSION

ANNEX 1

MET NET EUROPE PROPOSAL

(Return to Section 1.1)(Return to Section 1.2)(Go to Annex 2)

E-mail linkage of schools in the United Kingdom and across Europe to:

• exchange meteorological data and daily weather readings:
• circulate weather information, as well as ideas for projects;
• provide links to meteorologists.

Broadly, the objectives are that students should become able to :

• relate clouds and weather to the current synoptic situation and satellite imagery;
• observe and record weather systematically and present weather data by appropriate statistical means;
• raise awareness of, and account for differences of, weather across Europe in terms of latitude, distance from the sea and other climatic factors;
• account for weather phenomena in terms of the processes involved.

METHODOLOGY

Schools to make weather observations daily and e-mail them to other group members. The optimum time for observations to be made may be the lunch break. The observations/measurements to be exchanged to include some or all of the following: dry-bulb temperature; wet-bulb temperature or relative humidity; maximum and minimum temperature; barometric pressure; wind direction and speed/force; cloud type(s) and amount(s); type and intensity of precipitation; other weather observations and comments.

E-mail contact to be through teachers, not students. This has to be a meteorological network, not a general social network through which students exchange chit-chat.

Schools to be grouped by age-range and location. There may be four groups, corresponding, roughly, to Key Stage 2, Key Stage 3, Key Stage 4, A-level.⁽⁵⁾ Initially, there may be in each group five or six schools in the United Kingdom and three or four other schools elsewhere in Europe. If the project grows, the number of groups may increase but the number of schools in each group should perhaps be limited to ten.

(5) Key Stages 2, 3 and 4 are designations used in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, equating to the National Curriculum provision for ages 7-11, 11-14 and 14-16, respectively. A-level is the General Certificate of Education examination taken by students at the age of 17-18 after two years of study.

Observations to be made available through the World Wide Web (host site and controller need to be identified). The Web site to contain pictures of students at work in their schools and provide links to other useful Web sites.

Work-sheets, questions and graphics to be produced.

PLANNING AND EXECUTION

Schools with e-mail facilities to be identified through the questionnaire being sent to School Corporate Members and Weather Club members and through other means (e.g. direct approaches to schools in areas not well covered by Royal Meteorological Society school membership). A list of all participating schools to be published on the Web and sent by e-mail to the schools. Schools in other European countries to be recruited through contacts in those countries (e.g. Kees Floor in The Netherlands, Carola Sundius in Finland, Pål Hansen in Norway, Peter Rauh in Switzerland). Though this is essentially a low-cost operation, expansion may involve substantial sums of money. Therefore, sponsorship and/or advertising should be sought in due course.

Some ingenuity will be required to overcome problems arising from language differences. Weather reporting, for example, can be carried out according to a prescribed format, and there can be other types of standardization.

PROJECT

Met Net Europe needs a focus. This may take the form of a project for each group. A certificate could be awarded for the best project report in each group, presented by someone who is well-known. There has to be a clear educational purpose to Met Net Europe. It should not only enhance meteorological/ climatological knowledge/understanding but also improve communication skills (electronic and written), geographical knowledge, use of statistics, etc.

END OF ANNEX 1

Return to Section 1.1

Return to Section 1.2

ANNEX 2

DETAILS OF MetLink PARTICIPANTS

(Return to Section 2.3)(Return to Section 2.4)(Go to Annex 3)

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Achille Ferris Primary School, Malta

E-mail Address(Executive Secretary): gaetgrec@waldonet.net

Assistant Head Ms Jahel Sammut and Mr. Alfred Mifsud: alfredmifsud@usa.net

The class teacher is Ms Victoria Bajada and her class is Year 5 (8-9 years).

We have set up a class weather station, consisting of an anemometer, rain gauge, thermometer and a wind sock. We shall be taking our readings every day at 12.00. Usually Malta offers long sunny periods even during January and February. In Malta it rarely snows but we have strong winds and heavy rainfalls but they last for a couple of hours only.

Our maximum temperature today was 17°C ,Sea temp: 14°C, minimum temp: 9°C, wind NW.

We will hope to be useful to your project.

Thanks to all and I hope you will all have a Special 1999.

Bye

Alfred Mifsud (LINK PERSON)

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The American School, Bilbao, Spain

1. Name and address of school.

American School of Bilbao (ASB), Soparda Bidea 10, Berango-Vizcaya, 48640, Spain

Tel: 94-668 0861

Fax:94-668 0452

E-mail: asb@sarenet.es

ASB goes from Nursery through 10th grade and has approximately 350 students. Most of them are native Spanish speakers, but many other nations are also represented at ASB - Korea, Japan, Sweden, Finland and Poland among others. The teaching staff are also from many different countries - I am from South Africa and others are from the UK, USA, Canada, Spain, etc.

The teaching language is English.

2. Names of the teachers involved:

Patricia Rapson (rapson@asb.sarenet.es). I teach Earth Science and Art.

3. The following 7th grade students will be participating in the Project:

Xabier Abajo, Ana Maria Aguirre, Rosa Aguirre, Ylva Sjolin, Diego Fernandez, Max Grachev, Gabriela Alonso, Jon Inchaurraga, Bosco Zubiaga, Agata Allende, Sara Asensi, Kasia Bednarz, Hugo Aldonza, Rodrigo Luna, Ana Gonzalez, Rafaela Balparda, Borja Ganzabal, Laura Montenegro, Sara Garbisu, Alain Consonni, Leticia Serrats, Victoria Izquierdo, Paul Barroso

4. Students are all 12 or 13 years old.

5. ASB is at 43 deg 16 min North and 2 deg 56 min West. It is 56 m above sea level on a south-facing slope of a small wooded hill. It is 7km from the coast close to a small town called Berango (population about 5000), 25km North of the city of Bilbao. There a few industries in the area (copper recycling, paints, machine parts), but the school's immediate environment is farmland.

6. Weather readings will be taken by the students every day between 1:10 pm and 1:35 pm.

7. Instruments will be located in an open area near the school's sports fields.

Instruments: maximum and minimum thermometer, rain gauge, aneroid barometer, simple anemometer, wind sock. Observations of cloud cover and type, visibility, sleet, hail, etc. We will be trying to make some of our own instruments.

8. Our weather is very variable all year round, although we constantly get a lot of rain. Last week I recorded a maximum temperature of 26 deg C and this week there has been snow on the mountains around us and temperatures close to 0 in the evenings. Yesterday we had hail and sleet and today there's not a cloud in the sky! You can expect some strange data from us then! January and February are supposedly the coldest months for us.

We are looking forward to participating again this year - last year was a very worthwhile experience for all.

Regards,

Patricia Rapson

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The American School, Madagascar

1. Name and address of school:

American School Antananarivo, BP 1717, Antananarivo 101, Madagascar

Our school has 75 students, grades K-10. We are located in a suburb on the outskirts of Antananarivo.

2. Names of teacher(s):

Steven Jay Long, teaches grades 5-7 science, 6-9 social studies

3 and 4. Names and ages of students:

John(12), Sasha(12), Laura(13), Ashley(12), Sephie(12), Vanessa(12), Rachel(12), Maureen(13), Djo Djo(11), Farid(11), Tsuyoshi(11), Amber(11), Sitara(11), Miora(12), Sarah(12), Dan(10), Steffen(11), Hasindranto(10), Alefiyah(11), Ouda(10), Rachel(10), Lynda(10), Naivasha(10), Katrina(10)

5. Location of school:

Antananarivo is located in the centre of Madagascar on a highland plateau at 1432 metres. The population in "Tana" is approximately 1,500,000. The population of Madagascar is 14,000,000. Madagascar has an agriculturally-based economy with little industry.

6. Time weather observations will be made: 08:00 GMT

7. Instruments used: rain and wind gauge, maximum/minimum thermometer, cloud chart

8. Typical weather this time of year:

Temperatures range from 17-29 degrees Celsius with frequent rainfall. This is the beginning of the cyclone/rainy season in Madagascar.

Sincerely,

Jay

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Banani International Secondary School, Zambia

Banani is a small girls' secondary school (grades 8 to 12) established in 1993. The population of pupils is 135, with 12 teachers. Though pupils are mainly Zambian in nationality, a few come from different part of the world, the furthest point of origin being Canada. The staff also originate from different parts of the world - Canada, the UK, Austria, Germany and Zambia.

The junior grades follow a Zambian Junior Secondary School Syllabus while the senior grades follow the IGCSE syllabus.

The School is located in a farming district of Chibombo (a rural setting) in Central Zambia at an average attitude of 1000 metres above mean sea level. The School is 80 kilometres north of the Zambian capital Lusaka along the Great North road. This is the main highway linking the south of the country to the north.

The address of the School is: Private Bag RW 199X, Ridgeway 15102, Lusaka, Zambia.

Telefax: 260-01-611134.

It is only one teacher to be involved in this project (it's me the teacher of Geography) and my new e-mail address is: "amalambo" banani@zamnet.zm

The class of grade 10 will be involved in this project with ages of between 13 and 15. The names of the girls are: Precious Lumba, Hlambase Jere, Bhavini Desai, Natasha Ngwenya, Lupupa Chapewa, Mulela Mwila, Miyoba Mweene, Maryam Lushino Mfikeyi Makayi, Mwenzi Daka, Misozi Daka, Shula Kabunda, Nalukena Mutti, Chakubaisa Karima, Bwalya Kayumba and Chaitali Patel.

The instruments we have are: Six's thermometer, cup anemometer, wind vane, rain gauge, clock hygrometer, dry and wet bulb hygrometer and barometer. For this project we will not use the dry and wet bulb hygrometer.

Banani experiences a tropical climate (savanna). It is wet and warm between October and April; cool between May and late July; and hot and dry between August and late October. Our place, friends, knows no snow but high temperatures.

We are eager to take part in the project.

Best regards,

AH. Malambo

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Bedales School, UK

2. Teachers involved: Colin Prowse, Jackie Sueref and Kevin Adlam - all Geography teachers - and Frank Oliver in the Physics Department (for pressure data).

3. All of our fifth-form (final year GCSE) will be involved:

ALLEN, Boyd; ASHTON, Lysander; ASHWORTH, Luke; AUSTIN, Max; BANKS, Joseph; BATES, Julian; BERGESEN, Nicholas; BLUM, Bianca; BOATRIGHT, James; BOND, Jonathan; BOYS, Tilly; CARP, Lucy; CASTRO, Natalie; CHURCH, Athene; COLEMAN, Oliver; CROSTHWAIT, David; D'ABO, Polly; DAVIES, Will; DELLAL, Alexander; EHRLICH, Alexander; FARROW, Joni; GASQUOINE, Egg; GOODGER, Ben; GRAHAM, Richard; GRAY, Ben; HART, Chloe; HILLER, Tim; HODGE, Flora; HOWSON, Richard; INUGAI-DIXON, Adele; LIPPIETT, Oliver; LLEWELLYN, Henry; LONSDALE, Tahnee; MACLEOD, Heather; MARTIN, Charlotte; MARTIN, Melanie; MILLER, Dan; MULDOON, Rupert; NICKLIN, Amy; PAGE, Katherine; PERIGO, Oliver; ROBERTS, Josh; ROYCE, Laura; SHARPLES, Anna; SHAW, Peter; SIMM, Stephen; SMITH, Kirsty; STEWART, Andrew; SUMMERFIELD, Joseph; WENTWORTH, Felix; WISE, Antonia; WOLSTENHOLME, Asha; WOOD, Iain; WRIGHT, Ally

4. Pupils are aged about 16.

5. 51 degrees 1 minute North ; 0 degrees 27 minutes West; 100 m amsl; c.25 km from the English Channel; in the far western margin of the Weald with steep-sided but low chalk hills to the north, west and south. Bedales accounts for about a third of the land area and about a tenth of the population of the village of Steep - total population 1000. The nearby town of Petersfield has 13,000 inhabitants. Only light industry in the area - footloose service industries have begun to dominate with the building of the "motorway" around the town. Some forest (oak on the clay, beech on the steep chalk slopes) but largely an agricultural area - mixed farming. N.B. the Petersfield area (including the school) effectively sits in a bowl and can have very different weather to that experienced not more than 10 km away over the chalk hills. There is a tendency for both hill fog and radiation fog with attendant colder temperatures and lower sunshine levels.

6. Observation time 11:20 to 11:30 am.

7. Automatic Weather station is currently out of service due partly to a computer network changeover. Will probably be manual collection in a suitably-exposed site (Butts field) where the weather station is sited. Simple min/max thermometer, Casella anemometer, simple plastic raingauge, wind vane, etc.

8. During the data collection period the weather is most likely to be quite typical of a cool temperate humid maritime climate with temperatures at 11:30 between 5 and 10 degC (but possibly up to 15!). Frost is not common and snow even rarer. It is the time of year when our temperatures are at their lowest and rainfall quite high - around 20-30 Mm over the recording period is not unlikely. The weather is likely to be very variable however as depressions track across from the west interspersed with anticyclonic interludes that can persist, but usually last a few hours only! Under depressions our weather is likely to be very similar to that across much of the south of England. Under an anticyclone local variations can make our weather here quite peculiar!

Good luck and best wishes to all.

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Bor's School, Bor, Sweden

Bor's School, S-330 15 BOR, SWEDEN

2. Teachers who will be involved:

Christer Helander christer.helander@bor.varnamo.se

Henric Gustavsson henric.gustavsson@bor.varnamo.se

Arne Lennartsson arne.lennartsson@bor.varnamo.se

all teaching in physics, maths and computer science

3. The names of the students who will be involved:

Angelica Lonn, Anna Stahl, Sara Jendefors, Anders Kristiansson, Alexander Zovic, Kristin Andersson, Joakim Lindstrom, Mikael Sell n, Rebecca Sibner, Sebastian Svensson and Emelie Svensson.

4. The students are 15 years old, in grade 8.

5. Bor is a small village (2000 inhabitants) situated 12 km outside the town of Varnamo. It is surrounded by large forests, many small lakes and farmlands as well. There are also a lot of small factories, many of them are manufacturing goods for the rubber, plastic and wood industries. Distance to the west coast is 140 km, to the east coast is 180 km and to the south coast 300 km.

Position: latitude 57°05'N and longitude 14°11'E

6. Weather observations will be taken each morning at 07.30 GMT

7. Some of the instruments are located in a well-ventilated house near the school buildings.

Max and min thermometer and hygrometer, anemometer, barometer. All these are electronical. A manual rain gauge completes the instrumentation.

8. The average temp. for January/February is -3.6 C . The precipitation for January is 56 mm and for February 37 mm. (Varnamo 1961-1990) Last year was extremely wet. The rainfall in Varnamo was 1008 mm. It was the highest value ever since 1866, when the recordings started.

We look forward to participating in the project. We were on the train last year, too!

Christer Helander

Bor's School, S-330 15 BOR, Sweden

Tel: +46 (0)370-650950 Fax: +46 (0)370-650509

E-Mail: christer.helander@bor.varnamo.se

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Bryanston School, Dorset, UK

This is the second year for us - let's hope this year is as productive as last year!

Here are the details for Bryanston School.

1. Address of school: Bryanston School, Blandford, Dorset DT11 7LA. Tel: 01258 452411.

2. There are five teachers involved with sets of pupils who will be using the data generated.

Principal contact and Head of Department: Steve Richardson.

Other teachers: Hil Daynes; Natalie Insole; Caroline Parry; Brian Stebbings.

We are all Geography teachers.

3. There will be 130 pupils using the data aged 13-14 years. This is too many to name! There will also be a small Sixth Form (16-17 years) group whose names are: Mike Bascombe; Katherine Cran; Kirsty Alleyne; Sheona Grant; Matthew Heathcoat-Amory; David Wilkins; Chaitanya Vaidya; Geoffrey Rymer.

4. 50 52'N 211'W

The precise location of Bryanston School and details of the location:

Bryanston is about 80m above sea level 25 km inland, on the east-facing slope of the valley of the River Stour just outside Blandford, which has a population of around 11,000. The region is dominated by farming, although tourism is also an important industry.

5. We hope to make observations at 9.00 a.m. each day.

7. We will be using a Davis automatic weather system, located on top of one of the school buildings.

8. January and February are the stormiest months of the year, with some of the worst ever winds recorded in January and February of 1991. In January 1998, a tornado crossed the southeast part of the region. However, given the nearness to the English Channel, it is usually warm and wet, with the odd cold day or days. However, cold weather here means -5C at night and 2-3C during the day. It is possible to have snow (some is forecast for tomorrow) but it usually melts soon after falling.

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Casterton Community College, Lincolnshire, UK

2. The Geography Teachers involved are:

Mike Davis (Head of Geography) mtcvdavis@msn.com

Christine Bellis gbellis@msn.com

Jonny Watts

3. The names of the students involved are:

Alexandra Barton, Laura Sheahan (both are 15 years old)

Sam Bent, Elaine Birch, Rebecca Bloomfield, Zoe Bush, Michelle Cooper, Jo Cramp, Elizabeth Elliott, Cathryn Fiddler, Jason Grainger, Nicholas Greenwood, Lucinda Harris, Amanda Jennings, Mark Kettle, Samantha Kew, Harry Mackrill, Robert Mathers, Sharon Mewes, David Peacock, David Rawlings, Mark Richards, Michael Russon, Guy Sharman, Stuart Soutar, Louise Stafford, David Stebbings, Daniel Stephens, Nicola Tibbert, Fiona Tointon, Matthew Woodman, Katherine Tannock.

4. The students are Year 8 (12 years old) and studying weather as a unit of work in their National Curriculum Geography course.

5. Casterton Community College is at latitude 52.40N; longitude 00.31W.

It is 53 metres above sea level on the north-east facing valley side of the River Gwash. The College is on the northern edge of the small village of Great Casterton which is in the county of Rutland. The village is 3 kms north-west of the market town of Stamford and is surrounded by arable farmland. 7 kms to the west is the large reservoir called Rutland Water.

6. Weather observations will be taken each afternoon at 13.00 GMT

7. Data will come from an automatic weather station on the school roof and from thermometers and a rain gauge in a Stevenson screen on the edge of the school's playing fields.

8. Late January, early February weather: the climate is temperate. Temperatures are generally between 4-8 degrees centigrade. Frosts may occur on some nights (usually no more than three consecutive nights). Monthly rainfall is around 50mm. Snowfall, when it occurs, is generally light. Recent years have seen a trend to more rain and wind.

We are looking forward to sharing our observations with you.

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Eno Primary School, Eno, Finland

1. Eno Primary School

Address: Alapappilantie 12, 8120 Eno, Finland

email: enon.aa@eno.fi

2. The names of teachers : Mika Vanhanen.

Subjects: Information technology, sciences(Globe program) and music

3. The names of the students who will be involved:

Heiskanen Janne; Hyttinen Niko; Hyttinen Sami; Hmlinen Jyrki; Karhap Tuomas; Kaste Antti;

Kauppinen Veera; Knudsen Siv; Kotilainen Jenni; Laakkonen Marko; Laakkonen Tatu; Laakkonen Timo; Leppnen Seppo; Lomu Krista; Mannukka Jussi; Miettinen Jouni; Mnnist Antti; Nuutinen Timo; Nygren Heidi; Oksman Joona; Penttinen Mikko; Pitknen Heikki; Saaristo Niko; Saastamoinen Vesa; Schwartz Henry; Simonen Ilkka; Sivonen Irinja; Soikkeli Petra; Terml Antti; Tuononen Markus; Turunen Teemu; Vanhala Emilia; Varis Mikko; Vartiainen Sampo; Vnsk Jonne.

4. The ages of the students: 12 yrs

5. The precise location of your school:

Latitude : 62 deg 47.45 min North; Longitude : 30 deg 9.82 min East; Elevation : 128 m

Forest area; some industry ( Enocell, pulp mill).

6. Weather observations: 12.00 local time/10.00 UTC

7. We have a manual and an automatic weather station. We have been measuring daily since October 1995.

8. Weather normally here in late January and early February:

average temperature about -11/ -12 degrees Celsius.

Best wishes

Mika Vanhanen, Eno, Finland

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Gordon's School, UK

1. This is an 11 to 18 state grant maintained boarding school, with just over four hundred pupils, a mixture of boys and girls. The full title of the school is the National Memorial to General Gordon.

2. The teachers involved are Roy Oettinger (deputy head), Maggie Cunningham (Science), Shencyn Hughes (geography) and Jason Dunn (Geography).

3 The pupils involved are M Stevens, J Waters, D Philpotts, M Woodley (all year 10) and M Lazell, J Snider, G Hetherington, T Houghton, G Greenshields, J Ayres, S Crossman, D Hillier, A Cahill, N Annalls, all year 8.

4 Year 10 pupils are 15 years old year 8 pupils are 13 year old .

5. The school is located in rolling concrete(!). It's surrounded by roads, but there is a lot of green space, about 50 acres, which we use as playing fields and recreation space. We are in the Surrey Heath Borough, population 60,000, consisting of the town of Camberley and surrounding large villages . There is light industry in this area, but it is also agricultural , and

residential, being close to several large towns eg Guildford and Woking. London is only 35 km away. West End village is approx 9km NW of Woking, Surrey, very close to a motorway (M3). Our exact location is 51 18 N, 0 33 W. Altitude is approx 50m above sea level. Population of West End village is 3,346 from 1991 census. Woking population 86,765. West End village is approx 1,452 hectares in area, and has approx 1221 households. The average population density is 2.3: 47% of the population are 30 to retirement age. 10% of households have two or more cars. 85% of houses are privately owned. Ethnicity of the area: 99% white.

6. We will be taking our readings at 11.00am each morning.

7. Weather readings: wind direction from weather vane on top of 30m high building.

Max/min thermometer on south facing wall, 1.5 m from the ground.

Dry/wet bulb thermometer, and barometer, in similar position.

Rain gauge on open ground, anemometer on very open ground (playing fields).

8. The weather here in late January and early February is generally cold, sometimes with snow.

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IES F. Vidal I Barraquer, Spain

Some information about us:

1. IES "F. Vidal I Barraquer", President Companys, 3, 43005 TARRAGONA (SPAIN)

2. The names of all teachers who will be involved.

Josep Camps , Josep M. Borrut, Joan M. Maixé

Physics, Chemistry, Meteorology

3. The names of the students who will be involved.

Josep Anguera; Albert Girün; José Lüpez; Ana Belèn Portolés; Nria Sumoy

4. The ages of the students who will be involved: 17-19

5. The precise location of your school and details of the location

Latitude: 41 deg 07 min North; Longitude: 1 deg 14 min East; Height above sea level: 25 m

Tarragona is a coastal city (near the Mediterranean sea in the valley of River Francol) famous for their roman past (with important roman patrimony). Population: 100.000 persons, approx. Is a very important industrial petrochemical area and also a good touristic destination.

6. The time you will make your weather observations: 11.00 local time. 10.00 (GMT)

7. We have a manual and a automatic weather station. Instruments: Six's maximun and minimum thermometer, wet and dry bulb hygrometer, rain gauge, thermograph, higrograph, anemometer and wind vane, aneroid barometer, barograph.

Other observations: visibility, cloud cover and type, thunder and lightning.

Instruments located in the top of the building of the institute.

8. Average temperature maximum: 13.6 degrees Celsius. Average temperature minimum: 5.7 degrees Celsius. Rainfall monthly (average): 21.7 Mm.

We are looking forward to the 1999 project.

Josep Camps

and the spanish team.

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James Gillespie's HS, Edinburgh, Scotland

For those of you who know the city we are about two miles south of Princes Street in the Marchmont district. We are a state comprehensive (1100 students) and receive children from all over Edinburgh and beyond. Our first year students are usually aged 12 and we teach Scottish Higher in fifth year and A Level in sixth (note the differences with the English system). Class sizes are limited to 25 in the junior school and 20 in the upper school, and there is a long list of children waiting to fill any vacancies.

The site of the school is less than ideal from the collection of met data since the confined nature of the campus means that there will always be some inaccuracy in our recordings. However, I have a cohort of budding young meteorologists who are willing to take manual recordings so we will be able to join in the fun. Weather observations will be made at 11:15 every morning by a team of fourth year students (15 years old). They are:

Kieran Heil (Team Leader); Anna McCorquodale; Christopher Dyer; Jamie Hamill; Gavin Robertson; Ryan Higgins

There are many adjectives which one could use to describe our weather in January but the best is an old Scottish word - dreich - meaning cold, damp and generally miserable. Temperatures are usually in the range + 8 to -5 C but feels a lot colder with wind chill (mean midday wind speed for January 1998 was 8.5 knots). We do not tend to get a lot of snow, but make up for this with considerable amounts of rainfall (99mm in January 1998).

For over ten years we have been undertaking advanced fieldwork with the senior students and much of this work is in applied meteorology. Together with a school in Pennsylvania, recent expeditions have taken us to the icefields in Norway and the Rocky Mountains in Wyoming and Montana.

George Meldrum

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Kristelig Gymnasium, Norway

Our postal address is: Kristelig Gymnasium, Oscarsgate 1A, N - 0352 Oslo, NORWAY

e-mail address: metlink@kg.vgs.no

Kristelig Gymnasium is a private Christian School (ages 13-18), with approx. 800 students. The school is situated in downtown Oslo.

The names of the teachers in the MetLink Team are: Miss Gunn Marie Johansen (English), Miss Kathrine Krueger (English), Miss Lene Christine Mikalsen (English), Mr Leif Thore Jelmert (Geography, Chemistry and Mathematics), Mr Moritz Royr (Geography, Physics and Mathematics)

The students in the MetLink Weather Team are 15-16 years old, and consist of three classes of Year 10 students. They will appreciate personal contact with other students on e-mail level. All our students have their personal e-mail address at school.

The school is located at 59 degrees 56 minutes north, 10 degrees 44 minutes east. The altitude is about 30 metres above sea-level. Oslo is at the inner part of The Oslo Fjord, and the school is situated 1 kilometre from the shore. Oslo is the capital city of Norway, and the population of the town is half a million. Surrounding the town we have both industrial areas, farmlands and forests.

The weather observations will be taken at lunchtime (12.00) every day, and the instruments are placed in the school yard. Snowfall-registrations will be taken both in the school yard and on the top of one of the buildings.

We will take manual observations, using: max/min thermometer, rain gauge, barometer, hair-hygrometer, cloud chart.

The average temperature in February is normally about minus 5 degrees Celsius, and a rain/snowfall of approximately 40 mm water. February is the driest month of the year, and September is the wettest (90mm). The temperature may vary quite a lot, from plus 5 degrees to minus 20 degrees Celsius, depending on the wind direction. The dominant wind directions are either warm and humid Atlantic air from south-west, or much colder and drier Arctic air from north-east.

We look forward to taking part in the project.

Best regards,

The MetLink Weather Team at Kristelig Gymnasium.

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Larne Grammar School, Northern Ireland

BT40 1PQ (phone 01574 272791)

THE TOWN

Larne is a town, with a population of approximately 20,000, lying on the northern end of Larne Lough and on the east coast of Northern Ireland.

The town has a south to south-east aspect and is the southern gateway to the Antrim Coast Road. It is a dominantly market and port town with very few sizeable industries with the exception of a diesel generator manufacturer, FG Wilson, and a paper mill.

THE SCHOOL

Larne Grammar caters for almost 800 students from age 11 to 18 but at present they are sitting internal exams and names of participating students are not available.

Teacher involved is Eddie McAuley.

WEATHER OBSERVATIONS

The Stevenson screen is at an altitude of approx 45 metres. Data will be recorded at 0900 hours GMT. We will record: wind direction and speed, max and min temp, cloud cover and precipitation, visibility.

OUR WEATHER

IS awful! It is renowned for its extreme variability owing to a latitude of 55 degrees North and the westerly position. Generally, it is mild and wet. Max temps range from 2 to 16 C and min from -11 to +12. Snow is rare but most days feel like "rain days" (at least this winter).

Eddie McAuley

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Northamptonshire Grammar School, UK

A professional climatological station maintained by

NORTHAMPTONSHIRE GRAMMAR SCHOOL

1. Name and address:

Northamptonshire Grammar School, Pitsford, Northampton NN6 9AX

2. The names of staff who will be involved:

Mike Lewis, Head of Geography:

mjlewis@brixworth.demon.co.uk or mlewis@ngs.northants.sch.uk

Simon Larter: slarter@ngs.northants.sch.uk

3. The names of the students who will be involved:

Ben Goodyear, Simon Fleming, Chris Cockrell, Andrew Sunderland, Alex Jackman

4. The students are aged 16-17 years and are responsible for the maintenance of the school's weather station on a daily basis. They have been trained in basic meteorology as part of their A-level course.

5. Pitsford Hall weather station is at latitude 52 18' N 0 53' W. It is 115m above sea level on a hill overlooking the Brampton valley, a tributary of the River Nene. The weather station is maintained by the Department of Geography and supplies weather data to a number of private individuals, professional organisations, university departments, the COL (Climatological Observers' Link) bulletin as well as Northants 96, the local independent radio station.

6. Observations are made daily at 0830 GMT and a weather report released via e-mail and fax at 0900 hours. Observations are also updated daily via the station's web site. Schools participating in MetLink are invited to register for this daily weather report by either e-mailing the weather station directly (weather@brixworth.demon.co.uk) on by filling in the online registration form on the web site.

Observations made and instrumentation:

Maximum temperature, minimum temperature, dry bulb temperature, wet bulb temperature, relative humidity (Stevenson screen with UK Meteorological Office approved maximum and minimum thermometers, hygrometer and thermograph). Rainfall total, duration and acidity (Snowdon-type pattern raingauge, sterilised British Association raingauge, tilting syphon rainfall recorder, high resolution digital pH meter). Barometric pressure (UK Meteorological Office approved micro-barograph, Fortin mercury barometer). Wind speed (mean, max gust and direction) (digital anemometer and wind vane - soon to be replaced with UK Meteorological Office approved cup-counter anemometer). Sunshine hours (UK Meteorological Office approved Campbell-Stokes sunshine recorder). Grass and concrete minimum temperatures (digital thermometers - soon to be replaced with sheathed pattern minimum thermometers in a new separate ground enclosure). Other observations made: visibility, cloud cover and type, snow/sleet, hail, thunder and lightning etc.

We are looking forward to participating in the 1999 MetLink project.

Remember, to receive a report from this station simply e-mail us or register online.

Mike Lewis

Head of Geography (with Geology), Northamptonshire Grammar School, Pitsford, Northampton

NN6 9AX

Geography dept.

e-mail: mjlewis@brixworth.demon.co.uk

incorporating Pitsford Hall Weather Station

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Pennar Junior School, Pembroke, Wales

Our address is:

Pennar Junior School, Owen Street, Pennar, Pembroke Dock, SA72 6SL, Pembrokeshire, Wales

Your contact names will be Mr. B. Jones, Mrs E. Jones and Mr. P. Griffiths. The project will involve pupils from Year 3 and from Year 6 at our school. Year 6 are 10-11 years old and Year 3 are 7-8 years old.

Our school is located on the outskirts of the town of Pembroke Dock - population approximately 10,000 - which is on the south bank of the River Cleddau which flows into the Irish Sea. As the crow flies we are 5 miles from the coast. We are very close to the local oil refineries and to the Ferryport but the surroundings are rural. We are approximately 50m above sea level.

You can read our School Webpages and follow our European Links by visiting our website.

Pembrokeshire is a well known tourist area which encompasses the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park and numerous sandy beaches. Being on the extreme West of Wales the climate is mild but also damp (sometimes very wet - like today!).

We will be taking our measurements at 10.30 a.m. each morning.

We currently have the following equipment which we will be using for these readings:

Maximum/minimum thermometer, rain gauge, aneroid barometer, simple anemometer, wind sock

These will be located in the School grounds to the North and the South of the School.

We look forward to the project!

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Peterhouse School, Zimbabwe

The names of all teachers involved are myself (Andy Griggs), and Phillipa Sex, the Head of Department. Both of us are full time Geography teachers.

The students taking part are a group of five boys (names as yet not finalized) who are in their O-level examination year, and are all 16 years old.

The School is located at 18°10'30"S, 31°35'30" E, about 8km south-east of the town of Marondera, which has a population of some 20,000 people. It is on a watershed which runs E-W across the country at this point, and the landscape is gently undulating. There is a small amount of light industry in Marondera, but the main land use of the region is commercial farming, concentrating mainly on maize and tobacco.

We will be making our weather recordings at 7.30am (5.30GMT), using a Six's thermometer, wet/dry bulb hygrometer, aneroid barometer, rain gauge and ventimeter. We will also make visual estimates of cloud cover. The instruments are located in and around a Stevenson Screen, near the Geography department of the school.

We expect rain at this time of the year, as we are influenced to a great extent by the ITCZ, which migrates around us between October and April. At present it appears to have come to a complete halt over Zimbabwe, as we have been having far more rains than normal for the past 6 weeks. At present however, we are having something of a respite, with some sunshine.

We are looking forward to taking part in this project for the second year running.

Andy Griggs

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Pinewood School, Swindon, UK

Pinewood School, Bourton, Swindon, Wilts, SN6 8HZ, UK.

Phone: 01793 782205 (S), 01793 783010 (H)

We are a mixed independent prep.school of 210 children aged from 4 to 13. The senior part of the school has 140 children and those working on the 'weather watch' will be in their penultimate year (aged 11/12).

Location: 7km East of Swindon just in Oxfordshire (51'34N, 1'40W).

Altitude: 100m above sea level, 85km from the South coast.

The school has done very little practical work on weather but last year we built our first weather station. It is sited in a very exposed area. Readings will be taken daily by the children at 11.00.

The work we are doing will be of great educational value and we look forward to some interesting readings.

All good wishes for 1999

Jim

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Radley College, UK

2. The names of Geography Teachers who will be involved:

John Harris (Head of Geography) mjh@radley.org.uk

Mick Dean mfd@radley.org.uk

John Sparks jms@radley.org.uk

James Wesson wjw@radley.org.uk

John Wylie jpw@radley.org.uk

3. The names of the students who will be involved:

Barwood HJR Harry, Beardall SJ Sam, Beare CHL Charles, Boswell TCI Tom, Buri P Monday, Devonshire REJ Robert, Donald JLP James, Fearn MP Matthew, Gascoigne JAH Julian, Goldsmith WDJ Will, Heath N Nick, Hoare HCG Henry, Hodgson J M WALKER James, Holmes AM Andrew, Jakins HPA Henry, Jeans BJ Ben, Kelway JCP Jack, Lewis FWH Freddie, Mapelli Mozzi EA Ed, Marriage JJ Jethro, Mason AHW Archie, Mee HWJ Harry, Niven AJS Alexander, Oddie NG Neil, Oughton CAH Charlie, Parker SG Samuel, Peile MH Max, Pollard JWH James, Quicke EJ Edward, Rees TL Tom, Reid BJD Benji, Rolls GTA Giles, Sample RA Rory, Singh I Inderneel, Staveley ECW Edward, Thomas OCEANOGRAPHIC Owain, Truman EBJ Ned, Tuckett PdeB Philip

4. The students are 14-15 years and are studying weather as part of their GCSE course.

5. Radley College is at latitude 55.30N; longitude 3.42W. It is 70 metres above sea level in the valley of the River Thames. The college is near to the small village of Radley (population 5,000) 4 miles south of Oxford (population 110,000) and is surrounded by farmland.

6. Weather observations will be taken each morning at 08.30 GMT

7. Instruments are located near to the buildings of the Geography Department:

Six's max and minimum thermometer, wet and dry bulb hygrometer, rain gauge, aneroid barometer, ventimeter.

8. Late January and early February weather: the climate is temperate with slight continentality due to the inland location. Average January/February temperatures are 2-8 degrees centigrade with some overnight frosts and monthly rainfall of approximately 60mm with occasional snowfall. This winter has been surprisingly mild with record January temperatures of 16 deg C recorded on January 6, 1999.

We are looking forward to the 1999 project

John Harris

Tel: (+44) 01235-543043; E-Mail: mjh@radley.org.uk

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St Mary's School, Tristan da Cunha

This is Tristan da Cunha. According to the Guiness Book of Records, we are the remotest inhabited island in the world. We are situated in the Atlantic Ocean, 2,300 kms west of Cape Town. We have no airport and the only way to get to and from the island is by ship. These call only four or five times a year. The total population of the island is only 285 and our school, St Mary's, has only 29 pupils at present, ages range from 4 to 15. There are four classes and 7 teachers, although two are away at present, one on a training course in the UK.

Tristan has only one village where all the people live. It is situated on the north of the island and is called Edinburgh of the Seven Seas. The school faces the sea and our playing field ends at the cliffs. So we are only about 20 metres above sea level. Only 400 m behind the school there is a mountain 800m high which we call "the Base". Beyond the Base the centre of Tristan rises to an extinct volcanic peak which is 2200 m high. In 1961 another smaller volcano erupted on Tristan and the lava flow from this is 500m to the east of the school!

Class 4 will be taking part in the MetLink study.

The teacher is Mrs Ann Green and the pupils are: Sarah Glass, Ivan Green, Maria Green, Maria Swain, Dion Green, Barry Swain, Anita Repetto

Weather observations will be made at 09.00 GMT.

We have a thermometer, rain gauge, barometer and humidity gauge. Wind direction can also be given.

Our weather is oceanic and very changeable. At this time of the year temperatures are approx 15 to 25 degrees C, humidity is high and winds mainly from the SW. Rain falls about once every three days at sea level but more frequently on the mountain.

Brian Baldwin

Administrator

http://www.wndrland.demon.co.uk/tristan_da_cunha/tristan_history.html

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St Patrick's C.B.College, Zimbabwe

1. Name and Address:

St. Patrick's Christian Brothers' College, P.O. Box 1996, Bulawayo, Zimbabwe.

<CBC@telconet.co.zw>

2. Staff Involved:

Lindsay Bullivant (Head of Geography); Neva Songo and Keith Heywood - all teaching geography.

3. Students Involved:

Form 2 boys all 14 - 15 years old. There are too many to give the names, as they all do recording as this is part of their syllabus needs.

4. Situation:

Approx. 20' 11" south and 28' 38" east at an altitude of about 1380m.

The school is in a residential suburb on the south eastern side of town about 5km. from the CBD. We have about 630 pupils ranging from about 12 to 18 years old.

Bulawayo has a population of about 750 000 and is important for heavy industry. Commercial activities in the surrounding area include mining (particularly gold), cattle ranching, and some dairying and market gardening close to town.

5. Observations and Instruments:

Readings will be taken at about 7.30 a.m. (5.30 GMT). We will record max and min temp, wet-and-dry bulb readings, wind speed and direction, cloud cover and type, rainfall and, we hope, pressure. The instruments are housed in a Stevenson screen quite close to the geography classrooms.

6. Weather:

We are well into our summer and January is supposed to be our wettest month! Average rainfall for January is 142mm. and for February 109mm. but in the past several years has been very erratic. Our rainfall has been poor so far this season - just over 200mm. to date though other parts of the country have had very good rains indeed. At present temperatures are about 17°C at night and about 26°C by day. It is very overcast and humid but there has been very little of the heavy rainfall that we can have at this time of year. All our information will have to be through e-mail as at present we do not have the opportunity to use the Internet.

Lindsay Bullivant.

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St Peter and St Paul School, Chaldon, Surrey, UK

St Peter & St Paul School, 93 Rook Lane, Chaldon, Surrey, CR3 6AG

Your contact names are:

Mrs Laraine Poulter

Mrs Helen King

Mrs Jane Duffy

The project will involve all pupils in year 2. Year 2 pupils are 6 and 7 years old.

Our school is located in the village of Chaldon which is on the outskirts of Caterham, probably best known for Caterham 7 Cars. Chaldon is 190 metres above sea level and has a population of only 1800.

We will be making our observations at 11.00 and 15.00 hrs every day.

We will be using:- Max/min thermometer, rain gauge, barometer, ventimeter

These will be located near to the school buildings.

January can be the coldest month in Chaldon. Chaldon is usually 2 degrees lower in temperature than London because of its height and spring usually comes to Chaldon three weeks later than Richmond.

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South Farnham Junior School, Farnham, Surrey, UK

South Farnham School stands on a seven-acre site lying, as its name suggests, south of Farnham (lat. 51°12'N, long. 0°47'W, 95 metres above sea level). It is a four-form entry junior school (ages 7-11) with 492 children.

Teacher taking part: Mr David Searle (Year 6 teacher)

The names of the Year 6 students who are taking part: Rebecca Atkinson (11), Sophie Bailey (10), Sophie Barter (10), Stephen Castle (11), James Chant (11), Toby Comley (11), Jenny Coombes (11), Jenny Dale (10), Sarah Davies (10), Abbie Edwards (11), Ryan Hammond (10), Adam Hawes (10), Jonathan Hennessey (10), Jake Hossack (10), Zoe Hubbard (11), Charlie Kermer (10), Harriet Knowles (10), Matthew Lawrence (10), Alasdair McWhirter (10), Tom Merry (10), Stuart Moore (11), Cara Moran (11), Josef Pitkin (11), Jessica Port (10), Paul Roberton (10), Sam Russell (10), Craig Stockwell (10), Becky Warnock (10), Ashley White (11), Christopher Yates (11).

Time of observations: approx. 1210 GMT

The weather observations are made on an exposed area of playing field. Equipment: Windsock; Hygrometer; Wind-speed indicators (one a ventimeter, the other a low-cost plastic cup anemometer); LCD digital thermometer.

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Vestby Videregaaende Skole, Oslo, Norway

Our school is a coeducational comprehensive school with students aged 16-19 years. There are approximately. 600 students in all.

Our geography teacher's name is Alexandra Theophilakis. We, the students, are 17 years old.

Our school is in Vestby which is situated approximately. 35 km south of Oslo, at an altitude of 100 metres above sea-level and 15 km inland. The landscape is flat and the main activity is agriculture and forestry.

We plan to have readings at lunchtime (12 o'clock) every day. We have simple weather equipment which will be placed on the roof.

The weather varies from year to year but we have mostly cold weather with some snowfall in January and February.

The names of the students:

Class 2aaa:	Class 2aab:	Class 2aac:
Robert Anders Burman	Camilla Bernthon	Kjetil Roar Bugten
H kon Tuv Dalland	Nexhmije Bllackaku	Jannika Brresen
Dag Aanerd Ellingsen	Marie Dille	Andre Kristian Dahlslie
Tonje Marie Eriksen	Camilla Fjørli	Nga Thi Duong
Fatemeh Resam Fahad	Mette Porsvik Forfang	Hilde Grnli
Magne Andre Hagen	Sofi Rosalind Hindmarch	Ann-Karine Hanssen
Anders Halvorsen	Petter Johan Hines	Kim Harriz
H kon Isachsen	Signe Lind	Tom Christer Holid
Turid Jacobsen	Anders Lofterd	Trine Holmgren
Erik Folkeson Jensen	Ida Josefine Ohren	May-Kristin Juvstad
Steinar Jensrud	Elin Marie Skaug	Nora Ottesen
Veronica Kvarme	Paul Robin Stoneman	Elisabeth Rønning
Tonje Monsy	Bente Lise Stubberud	Cecilie Sørlie
Beate Nordby	Vibeke Svingen	Anders Torp
Øystein Olsen	Tine Strømme Srensen	Tine Elmann Wangen
Jonny Ringstrøm	Anette Tosterud
Monica Red
Camilla Antoinette Stenseng
Magnus Bernard Whatley

Our best regards

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Vora-Oravais-Maxmo Hogstadieskola, Finland

Hi you all. I hope this year's project will be as interesting as last year's was for me and my students.

Our school is a junior high with app. 270 student from three "counties". It's called Vora-Oravais-Maxmo Hogstadieskola, due to the three counties. The students are 13-16 years old. We have about 23 teachers. The teaching language is Swedish! We have, since about ten years ago, a special system with the schedule. Two hours a week the teachers can offer special theme-lessons, not necessarily related to the normal lessons. MetLinkInternational project is placed on these lessons for the next six weeks.

My name is Alf Wilhelmsson, and I'm the only teacher in our school engaged in this project this time as well as last year. I'm a teacher in biology and geography.

The students involved in this years project are: Pernilla Stenroos, 15; Johan Ahlback, 15; Davis Sandqvist, 13; Christian Grind, 14; Hakan Fors, 14; Jonas Jakobsson, 13; Mikael Ronn, 14; Frank Lofgren, 15; Antti Melleri, 14; Martin Vesterlund, 16; Mathias Backman, 15; Christian Jafs, 15; Markus Rintanen, 15; Per-Axel Karlsson, 15; Markus Kullback, 15; Mathias Nyholm, 15; Jonas Ostman, 13; John Holmlund, 13.

The school is located in the western part of Finland, about 30 km east from the city of Vasa, 10 km from the coast, 22°20'E, 63°15'N, 10 metres above sea level, in an agricultural area surrounded by forest. Vora is a small village with a population of 3900.

The weather observations will take place at 1 PM.

We have recently invested in a Davis Weather Monitor II semiprofessional weather station. The station is located on the roof of our "All science house", about 10 metres above ground, and the display is in the biology/geography classroom.

The weather here in Vora is normally quite cold in January/February. January is the coldest month of the year. Last year was very different from the normal, that is much warmer. This year seems to be more normal. We have quite a lot of snow (~15 - 40 cm) and the temperature is normally near -20°C. (Today: -15°C).

We look forward to participating in this project again this year and wish you all the best!

Best Regards

Alf Wilhelmsson, Vora, Finland E-mail outside this project: wili@home.se

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Wells Cathedral School, UK

Details about Wells Cathedral School:

We are delighted to be joining the MetLink International scheme for 1999. Wells Cathedral School is a mixed Independent school, catering for both day pupils and boarders. It is a conventional school with a Junior School up to the age of 11, and a Senior School, with pupils taking GCSEs and A-levels, but WCS is unique in that it has both boy and girl choristers, plus one of the country's specialist music schools. There are currently 200 pupils in the Junior School, plus 567 pupils aged 11 to 18 in the Senior School, including 189 in the Sixth Form.

e-mail address: wells.cathedral.school@ukonline.co.uk

Phone : 01749 672117

Fax: 01749 670724

Wells and its climate:

Wells is England's smallest city, with a population of 8,800. It is situated in the north-eastern part of Somerset, some 18 miles due south of Bath and Bristol. Its site, close to the famous cathedral, is at the foot of the southern flanks of the Mendip Hills, at an altitude of 60m. Five miles away from Wells is the spectacular limestone scenery of Cheddar Gorge and Wookey Hole. Its sheltered location, plus the urban fabric, modifies the prevailing temperate climate, and several A-level pupils have identified a distinctive microclimate in the city and around the cathedral. Consequently, winters are usually mild and damp, and the city of Wells can miss the more severe weather found on the Mendip Hills. There is also a rain-shadow effect, with air flows from the north and east. Even so, the Wells area suffers from temperature inversions during January and February, and the proximity of the Somerset Levels and the rivers Axe, Brue and Sheppey, can lead to mist and fog.

Weather equipment at WCS:

The school has an automatic weather station ("Weather Reporter" - AU Enterprises) linked to a 386PC giving 24 hour readings for: max/min temperatures; relative humidity; rainfall; wind speed/ direction; hours of sunlight; pressure.

Ground-level observations are made of cloud cover/type and current weather.

The school also has access to the MIST system from the Met Office and other weather sites on the WWW. Each day, Lower Sixth pupils taking A-level Geography produce a daily weather forecast for the school based on the Weather Reporter data, the MIST satellite images and the synoptic pressure charts. Each Wednesday, the WCS Weather Watchers collate the daily readings and produce a weekly synopsis for the school`s website. They also prepare a five-day outlook for the webpages, and the local newspapers. Data is also provided on request to other individuals e.g. farmers, loss adjusters and tourist attractions.

Teacher involved with the Project: Dr.A.K.Hignell (Head of Department)

Pupils: The following Lower Sixth pupils (aged 16 to 17) will be involved in making daily readings - Jordan Berry, Harriet Chapman, Peter Cowlishaw, Jasper Drew, Lucy Elston, Robbie Lamb, Eleanor Lock, Helen Salisbury, Rosie van Eyken, Leanne White.

The current Weather Watchers team will be involved in the follow-up analysis and project exchange - Mark Hemus (aged 12), William Henderson (aged 14) and Ed Lewis (aged 17).

The readings will be taken at approx. 8.45 a.m.each day.

Return to Section 2.3

Return to Section 2.4

ANNEX 3

MetLink PROJECT WORK

(Return to Question 4) (Go to Annex 4)

School 1

Once all the explaining is done, we will answer some questions about each section and then have a test and correct any misunderstandings that may exist. Then, I'll be teaching them a section on weather forecasting and we will use the data from the schools to do this. For example, I'll give them a set of data from Week 1 from one of the schools they chose and ask them to forecast what the weather will be for the weekend. We can then confirm our forecast using your reports, the newspapers and any other information the schools sent. Another possibility is to try to explain some of the very severe weather events that we were informed about, e.g. the extreme cold in Scandinavia and the sudden rain and hail storms in other countries. The last section is also something I will teach and deals with climate and seasons and here we will compare data from schools in the northern hemisphere with data from the southern hemisphere. For the section on climate, the initial information from the schools which talk about the climate they experience will come in handy. So, as you can see, the MetLink project is still going on here and will be for some time. It has been great to have real data to work with and I think that "talking about the weather" will be something the students will be able to do in a very informed way.

School 2

We are using the MetLink data to give pupils the opportunity to experience computers. This is in line with the orders for Key Stage 3 (KS3) Geography. At the same time we are looking at weather data from a 'List A region' (Europe) and a List B Region (Africa) so complying with the requirements of the KS3 orders. The requirement for explaining the data/patterns will also comply with the orders of the National Curriculum at KS3. Pupils will be presented with all of the MetLink data as a spreadsheet, and they will have to organise it and extract the necessary data, as well as perform operations on it. That will be quite a challenge for some of these pupils, for most pupils age 13-14 think that computers are (1) irrelevant; (2) for playing 'Tomb Raider'; or (3) for visiting their football team's website! All pupils will have to provide maps, graphs and text. They will have to use spreadsheets to calculate totals and means. The tasks have been graded, with (1) being basic, (2) being equivalent to a pass grade at GCSE and (3) being a good pass. These pupils are two years away from GCSE at present. The extension task will prove too taxing for all but the most literate.

The reason for organising the work this way was to get all pupils to use a computer constructively for a clearly specified and dedicated purpose. My department does not have any computers - they are all in the Technology facility, and their use for Geography has to be booked in one term in advance, so that technology staff can be aware of what it is they are teaching. When most of the pupils are doing the work, there will not be a specialist subject teacher with them. However, we do have sufficient workstations to go around - unlike some schools which have 15 computers for a class of 25. We have three weeks, because the half term break (February 15,16 &17) eliminates some of the classes' Technology time! Pupils will have about one hour of taught time per week, and half an hour "homework" time, so for the most fortunate, there will be 4.5 hours, but for those for whom half term will have an impact there will be only three hours - not a lot of time for computer illiterates.

All pupils will be given the following resources on the computer network:

A list of the participating schools MetLink International 99

School name Town/City Country Lat Long. Alt(m)

Eno Primary School Eno Finland 62° 48'N 30° 10'E 128

V.O.M. Hogstadieskola Vora Finland 65° 15'N 22° 20'E 10

American School Antananarivo Madagascar 18° 55'S 47° 31'E 1432

Achille Ferris Primary School Msida Malta 35° 53'N 14° 27'E

Kristelig Gymnasium Oslo Norway 59° 56'N 10° 44'E 30

Vestby videregående skole Vestby Norway 59° 37'N 10° 45'E 100

American School Bilbao Spain 43° 16'N 2° 56'W 56

IES "F Vidal I Barraquer" Tarragona Spain 41° 07'N 1° 14'E 25

Bor's Skola Bor, Varnamo Sweden 57° 05'N 14° 11'E

St Mary's Edinburgh of the Seven Seas Tristan da Cunha 38° 00'S 12° 20W 20

Bedales Hampshire UK 51° 01'N 0° 27'W 25

Bryanston School Blandford, Dorset UK 50° 52'N 2° 11'W 80

Casterton Community College Stamford, Lincs UK 52° 40N 00° 31'W 53

James Gillespie's High Edinburgh UK 55° 56'N 3° 12'W 35

Larne Grammar School Larne UK 54° 52'N 5° 50'W 45

Northamptonshire Grammar School Northampton UK 52° 18'N 0° 53'W 115

Pennar Junior School Pennar UK 51° 47'N 4° 57'W

Pinewood Swindon UK 51° 34'N 1° 40'W 100

Radley College Abingdon UK 55° 30'N 3° 42'W 70

South Farnham Junior School Farnham, Surrey UK 51° 13'N 0° 49'W

St Peter & St Paul School Chaldon, Surrey UK 51° 16'N 0° 04'W 190

Wells Cathedral School Somerset UK 51° 12'N 2° 39'W 60

Banani International School Lusaka Zambia 15° 28'S 28° 16'E

Peterhouse Marondera Zimbabwe 18° 10'S 31° 35'E

St Patrick's Christian Brothers Coll. Bulawayo Zimbabwe 20° 11'S 28° 38'E 1380

A work sheet - which follows MetLink International'99 Weather Project Tasks

1) On the map of Europe, locate the reporting schools. Using the Weather symbols from ClarisWorks Library, produce a weather map for a single day from the data you have, to show: (a) temperature (b) wind strength and direction (c) weather (snow, rain, sun, etc) (d) an explanatory key.

2) For one of the following pairs of places only: James Gillespie's High School , Edinburgh and Kristelig Gymnasium, Oslo OR Larne Grammar School, Northern Ireland and The American School, Bilbao, Spain OR Bryanston School, Blandford and Eno Elementary School , Eno, Finland (a) Describe - using graphs - the weather of each place in the pair. (b) Describe the differences between the weather of the two places. (c) Explain the differences between the weather of the two places.

3) Using the weather data for Madagascar, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Tristan da Cunha: (a) Draw a graph to show the pattern of maximum temperatures over the time for which you have data. (b) Give two reasons which might help explain the variation shown in your graph. (c) Calculate the location which has (I) the most rain; (ii) the highest average maximum temperature. d) Write a brief description of the weather in the four locations.

EXTENSION TASK

4) For the places in the United Kingdom, calculate: (a) the wettest place, (b) the driest place, (c) the warmest place (highest average max temp), (d) the coldest place (lowest average min temp), (e) show your results on a map of the United Kingdom. Label the map with the names of the participating schools.

Access to maps from the software files of ClarisWorks 5 (maps and weather symbols).

Given that we have set these specific tasks, I have devised a marking guide for my department. It follows. The marks are given a guide only, to help indicate the value of each response.

1) Answers should be reasonably accurate, with well-located information from one day of the ten or so available. The important points will be: (I) a clear title. (ii) an obvious key (iii) a detailed representation of the weather - maps must not have all locations identified by weather symbols, as this would make a very dense network over southern England.

2) (a) Any graphs must have labelled axes (1 mark each), and must have a title (1 mark) and be clear. Typically, pupils may plot temps with different lines for two locations. (max 6 marks) (b) Descriptions of weather must refer to the graphs, and discuss range of temperatures. Best marks will be given for reference to specific data. Suggest four marks for an accurate description of the data, with a further two for identifying any patterns in the data. (c) Explanations should be based on differences in latitude (Larne and Bilbao; Edinburgh and Oslo) or the maritime and continental natures of the locations (Bryanston and Eno, Finland). A clear account of how energy received from the sun (insolation) and latitude are related. This should be worth four marks, as data wil be used to support the arguments. Similarly for the maritime and continental locations of Bryanston and Eno, there will have to be a clear indication of the impacts of heating due to proximity of oceans, and the distance form warm oceans (as well as the presence of the Arctic) for four marks. Data will be used to support the arguments.

3) (a) Drawing the graph requires some manipulation of the spreadsheet. Therefore, it should be worth some marks. It needs to include a title and labels and key where appropriate. (b) Reasons which could be given for variations are Tristan's location in the middle of the ocean, Antananarivo's (Tana's) and Harare's altitudes. For best marks these must be explained, not just given as reasons. Max of 4 marks - reasons worth up to 2, explanation is 2 marks. (c) Calculations will probably be accurate. - I can supply correct answers, but if anyone gets there before me they can work it out too! (1 mark for value and one for units - no units no mark) (d) Must refer to the data for marks.

Few will do the extension task 4) (a) The wettest place is (b) The driest place is (c) The warmest place is (d) The coldest place is (e) The data above will be displayed on a (titled) map (with units) of the United Kingdom, and will be accurately located. (6 marks) In addition to all of this, for the period of the two weeks of MetLink, I have displayed in the main thoroughfare of the school materials which show what the project is all about. I have produced a wipe-clean map at A3 size which has the relevant details added to it so that interested parties can see what is going on. I also posted details of the participating schools - the details from Tristan caused a bit of a stir, as did the reports from Eno and VOM about their very cold conditions. It was possible - using the colour laser printer - to make some very good maps from gmueller's site at Karlsruhe - especially maps showing the temperatures across Europe.

END OF ANNEX 3

Return to Question 4

ANNEX 4

JOHN HARRIS'S RESPONSE TO Q.17

(Return to Question 17)(Return to Question 19)(Return to Section 3.1)(Return to Section 3.2)

Three other very time-consuming elements but again I felt it was worth doing.

1) I stripped out returns and other odd e-mail characters before uploading to our website. I feel that this improved the quality and consistency of the end product.

2) Several gifs and jpegs were in strange format and needed conversion but again all was ultimately resolved.

3) The data, via the Reading database, was excellent. BUT I would have preferred a shorter and single school field; e.g. 'Radley UK' rather than 'Radley College' in one field and 'Abingdon, Oxon, UK' in another. The maps and school information give these details. I have similar views on the weather experience - maximum of ten words should be quite sufficient, preferably avoiding suggestions of what may or may not happen later in the day! The essence of the spreadsheet is brevity and again screen size.

END OF ANNEX 4

Return to Question 17

Return to Question 19

Return to Section 3.1