NOVA/PBS Online Adventures Return with El Nino
Posted on January 26, 1998
NOVA/PBS Online Adventures have announced a website, Tracking El Niño, dedicated to the important weather phenomenon. El Niño has generated intense media coverage and huge popular interest, and for good reason - El Niño transforms the entire planet into a weather laboratory, and reveals the heart of the "machine" that generates the Earth's weather.
The Tracking El Niño site will be a complete guide. Beyond news and insightful articles, the site will create a personal weather laboratory for users called "Weather Station," which will feed real-time data from the field to an onscreen panel of virtual instruments modeled after those used by weather scientists. Round-the-clock Webcams, situated at key locations including the ocean view from Maui in Hawaii, Mazatlan in Mexico, and Reñaca Beach in Chile, will let users watch as storms roll in. Up-to-the-minute animations (supplied by NOAA--National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) will let users visualize El Niño, instead of just reading about it.
The site will also act as a learning lab, recreating the conditions and experiences of discovery in the field. For example, users can engage in a search for evidence of past El Niños, just as scientists in the field do, by looking at tree-ring samples from the California Sierra, or x-rays of a coral sample from the Galapagos. Web surfers can ride into an El Niño storm off the coast of California, and fly the jet stream from Alaska to Hawaii. To further personalize the experience, NOVA will post reports from the field by its own Web reporter, equipped with a digital camera, notebook computer, and satellite phone.
NOVA Online provides a companion Web site for each week's NOVA broadcast, program schedules, teacher guides, audience feedback, and links to related sites. In addition, NOVA Online joins with PBS to bring you images and reports from live expeditions around the globe. NOVA Online appears on PBS ONLINE.