New Zealand Schools Climate Change Competition
New Zealand Schools Climate Change Competition
NIWA, BP, The Royal Society of New Zealand, Geological and Nuclear Sciences and Futures Thinking Aotearoa are excited to announce the launch of a competition that will enhance the understanding of young people about the critical issue of climate change.
Climate change, and our response to it, is an issue of global importance, affecting food production, water resources, ecosystems, energy demand, insurance costs and much else.
Climateprediction.net is the largest experiment in the world to try and produce a forecast of the climate in the 21st century. There is a broad scientific consensus that the Earth will continue to warm over the coming century. Climateprediction.net will help Climate Scientists work out what is most likely to happen. The experiment uses ‘pc power’ i.e. the power of thousands of computers worldwide in order to gather the required information. The climateprediction.net experiment is based at Oxford University and is co-ordinated by New Zealand Climate Scientist Dr. Dave Frame.
This competition will provide an opportunity for students to take part in a ‘real’, global scientific experiment.
Competition Details
For full details of the competition, visit the NIWA website, www.niwa.co.nz/edu/students/ and follow the link to ‘New Zealand Schools Climate Change Competition’.
Who can enter the competition?
The competition is open to
students in Years 9 – 13.
Students may enter the
competition individually or in groups of up to three
students.
What do students have to do?
Students will need to download and run the climateprediction.net computer modelling experiment on a home or school computer. Once the experiment has been completed, students will be asked to produce a PowerPoint presentation covering details of their climate forecast for the period 2050 – 2065 for a chosen location in New Zealand. Students will be asked to consider implications of this forecast, for example what the general public and local councils should be doing now to prepare for their particular climate change scenario.
What are the prizes?
For the students:
For the best presentations in
the Year 9 – 10 category:
- 1st Prize: $300 - 2 x
highly commended prizes: $100
For the best presentations
in the Year 11 – 13 category:
- 1st Prize: $500 - 2nd
Prize: $250 - 2 x highly commended prizes of $100
For the
schools:
- For each category, a digital camera worth $500
will go to the school whose students have produced the
winning presentation.
We are looking into the possibility
of bringing students in the winning groups to Wellington to
meet with Climate Scientists and tour research facilities,
in December.
Further information:
Visit the website
www.niwa.co.nz/edu/students/ and follow the link to ‘New
Zealand Schools Climate Change Competition’ for full
details.
The deadline for submission of PowerPoint
presentations is Friday November 4th. However, it is
advisable to download the experiment as soon as possible as
it will take up to 4 months to run, depending on the speed
of the computer used. Also note: it is essential to
download the ‘Schools’ version of the experiment. Visit the
climateprediction.net website www.climateprediction.net
and click on ‘Schools’ on the left for further
details.
ENDS