Jimmy Adegoke, Ph.D., assistant professor of geology.

Climatologist's efforts bring GLOBE to UMKC

By: Shayne Sprenkle

Posted: 10/3/05

Our earth is often first viewed by elementary students in science classrooms upon the spherical rotating map we call a globe.

Fittingly, a program known as GLOBE (Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment) was established as a hands-on primary and secondary school-based education and science program developed and funded by NASA, the National Science Foundation, and the U.S. Department of State.

The program's aim is to engage the youths of America in scientific investigations. The program allows students to gain first-hand knowledge about scientific discovery and contribute real scientific data about our earth's atmosphere, soil and water climate conditions through the completion of interactive protocol detailing such conditions as precipitation, soil temperature and surface ozone.

Jimmy Adegoke, Ph.D., assistant professor of geology, recently completed official paperwork including the UMKC Geosciences Department as a U.S. GLOBE Partner Coordinator to assist in protocol training workshops for teachers of local Kansas City urban middle schools.

Adegoke attained his bachelor's and master's degrees in geology and climatology at the University of Science and Technology in Nigeria. He completed his Ph.D. at Pennsylvania State University in 2000.

The new partnership will facilitate the existing Minority Outreach Science Enrichment Program (MOSEP) developed and funded by the Department of Geosciences.

"Our goal is to instill in youths from the urban school districts a passion for science, principally among minority students," Adegoke said.

The MOSEP program is a five-week summer middle school science internship exposing students from Northeast Middle School to UMKC science laboratories, specifically Adegoke's Laboratory for Climate Analysis and Modeling (LCAM).

This climate modeling laboratory was originally funded by the Center for the City and currently includes a 24-computer cluster using the Regional Atmosphere Modeling System (RAMS) to simulate the atmosphere of the Kansas City Metropolitan Area. "Our target is to involve four middles schools in MOSEP each summer," Adegoke said.

Adegoke's research involves the study of Ground Level Ozone. Commonly misunderstood, this "smog" is not the protective atmospheric ozone but is the harmful industrially-promoted form created from the combustion of nitrous oxides with oxygen gas, O2.

These ozone precursors are introduced into the city streets from automobile exhausts and into our skies from industrial byproducts. Ozone, O3, can severely impact persons with respiratory diseases such as asthma. The increasingly toxic ozone alert levels-green, yellow, orange, red and purple-reported by the local news stations during the summer months have been established because of the impact ozone can have on our normal respiration.

With over 100 square miles of city street pavement, the Kansas City metro area creates what is called an "urban heat island." As sunlight penetrates the black city asphalt, heat becomes trapped; unable to quickly escape into the air above, this collected heat creates up to seven degrees higher temperatures than surrounding rural areas.

Adegoke believes this heat is connected to the formation of the ground level ozone and should be monitored to access this relationship.

To this end the husband and father of three found time in between his gig as bass vocalist in the KC Jazz Ambassadors and teaching to create the Ground Level Ozone Spatial Concentration project. His team added 20 new Passive Sampling Devices (PSD), instruments to measure the ground level ozone precursors, across the metro area to effectively access the urban heat influence on these harmful ozone-producing precursors.

Students such as paid intern Chris Green, undergraduate, must monitor the PSD's for data collection each week during the ozone season (April to September).

Adegoke's passion to educate students in the geosciences is reflected in his commitment and belief in strategic learning.

"You always get to do it because you believe," Adegoke affirmed.

ssprenkle@unews.com