POWRE: A Study of the Influence of El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) on the Polar Ocean Regions: A Student and Scientist Partnership

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9752998 Ledley The ENSO cycle is the largest recognized source of interannual climate variability on a global scale. Recent work has shown that there is a statistically significant relationship between the ENSO signal observed in the tropical Pacific Ocean and the sea surface temperature and sea ice concentration in the Ross Sea of Antarctica. This work will be extended in this program in which we will develop a true student-scientist partnership between high school students and the PI to investigate the extent to which the ENSO affects the climate of the polar oceans. In the first phase of the project students will be introduced to the various components of the Earth system and the phenomena they will be investigating. In the second phase students will begin by finding data about the climate in the polar oceans. They will, with the PI, determine the quality of the data and its appropriateness for use in the study. Data will be examined spatially and spatially averaged over the polar oceans to produce time series. The spatial analysis will be used to look for patterns of change, and the time series will be compared to the ENSO record to determine the relationships that exist between the ENSO record and the climate of the polar ocean regions.