Dear Educator,
 Our topic for this month's Classroom Connections is arguably one of the most extreme sports on the planet – ski jumping. With the right weather conditions, jumpers have been known to travel as far as three football fields before ever touching the ground. WeatherBug Meteorologist Bay Scroggins goes to the top of the mountain to see what motivates these extreme athletes and ask them what part weather plays in the sport. View video in Windows Media Player or in QuickTime.
 Earth Networks–Taking the Pulse of the Planet
Now for some really big news, on January 12, 2011, the parent company of WeatherBug, changed its name from AWS Convergence Technologies to Earth Networks. Not to worry, WeatherBug will continue to be the largest live weather network in the world. This change goes beyond a new name. It reflects an expanded focus to include additional environmental observations and measurements, beginning with the deployment of the largest global greenhouse gas observation network. The vision of Earth Networks is to develop and implement sensor networks that measure additional environmental factors, such as air quality, water quality, wind and pollution.
The WeatherBug Schools Program is working on getting the information collected via the Earth Networks Greenhouse Gas Network and making it available to educators and researchers. One day soon, WeatherBug schools will be able to access greenhouse gas data using WeatherBug Achieve.
To learn more about Earth Networks, go to www.earthnetworks.com where you can view live Greenhouse Gas observations, watch videos on Greenhouse Gas, learn more about the vision of Earth Networks and more.
WeatherBug Announces New Alerting Feature
In addition to the name change, WeatherBug is also providing a new alert feature to keep us safe–the WeatherBug Dangerous Thunderstorm Alert.
The WeatherBug Dangerous Thunderstorm Alert (WDTA) provides advanced notification of the increased threat of severe
weather moving into an area. It is specifically issued when there is a high frequency of lightning detected by the WeatherBug Total Lightning
Network™ (WTLN) indicating the increased potential for: lightning strikes, high winds, tornadic activity, heavy rain rates and hail.
Issued through the WeatherBug Desktop Application, WeatherBug.com, WeatherBug Achieve, WeatherBug Mobile and WeatherBug Professional Products, the WDTA alert is
visually depicted by a purple polygon encompassing the alert area that displays the area, size, direction and speed of
the severe lightning activity. It also provides detailed weather bulletin information within the text.
Please NOTE: The WeatherBug Dangerous Thunderstorm Alert is only available within the contiguous United States and does not supersede the alerts issued by the National Weather Service for severe thunderstorms or tornados. Learn more about WDTA. Thanks for reading this month's issue of Classroom Connections. Please stay tuned for next month's issue when we try another extreme sport–ice fishing!
Regards,
The WeatherBug Schools Team
Phone: 800-544-4429, Ext. 2
Email: weatherbugschools@aws.com
The WeatherBug Schools Program
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