Thank you to all the 2022-2023 Climate Detectives’ teams for making a difference
More than 170 teams from all over Europe concluded their journey as Climate Detectives and shared their investigations on the project’s platform. ESA Education would like to thank all the students and teachers who participated this school year for their amazing work and for helping us to make a difference in protecting Earth’s climate.
The Climate Detectives project challenges school students to ‘make a difference’ in understanding and protecting Earth’s climate. This year a fantastic number of teams accepted the challenge. From investigating how composting food waste from school can contribute to reducing the production of gases linked to climate change, to how climate change can affect respiratory diseases or how to create a super-absorbent material for agriculture to cope with drought, participating teams investigated many different topics and were very innovative. During phase 1 of the project teams received feedback from climate and Earth observation experts. As part of their journey, teams have also proposed actions to raise awareness and monitor the problem they investigated and shared their work with their peers.
Stay curious!
At the end of the project and to celebrate the completion of Climate Detectives 2022-2023, a final online event took place highlighting the outstanding work from the teams. Scientist Ana Bastos, from the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, joined the event and presented similarities between the students’ investigations to the research being done by climate scientists. Ana Bastos also gave some nice suggestions for any future scientists on the audience: “Stay curious because that’s what scientists are!”.
Highlighted projects
This year we received a fantastic number of projects, and we were extremely impressed by the high quality of the teams’ investigations. Some of the projects shared stood out for the investigation presented and for the impressive use of weather and climate data, and ESA has therefore decided to mention these highly commendable teams:
- Autumn Sleuths, Malta – The team investigated if the autumn season in Malta is disappearing and analysed average monthly temperature and rainfall data from the years 1922 to 2022.
- Detectives Clima Hércules, Spain – Since 2021 the team has been investigating the impact of climate change on the water quality in Chiclana (Cádiz). The team analysed rainfall and temperature records, volume of dammed water and cyanobacteria density.
- IES LA ZAFRA, Spain – The team studied the disappearance and retreat of ice and glaciers in the Sierra Nevada and how this has affected the population as well as the flora and fauna of the area.
- Les eco-justiciers, Tunisia – The team investigated the dangers that threaten the Posidonia meadows in the Mediterranean.
- The River Dodder Detectives, Ireland – The team investigated how Climate Change has affected the river Dodder’s ecosystem, using indicators such as pH, temperature, dissolved oxygen, presence of the mayfly and stonefly.
- Thaderinos, Spain – The team performed a study about the flash floods in Orihuela and the influence that global warming can have on them.
- Vianu Researchers, Romania – The team researched the occurrence of droughts in Romania.
Climate Detectives Young Scientists
This edition we have also received amazing projects from our teams of young scientists (from 8 to 11 years old). From investigating the parrot population (Team Green Parrot, Germany), to the causes and consequences of sea level rise (5éA Les Carolines, Spain) or how climate change can affect water quality (The Olympus Hydronauts, Greece) and the local biodiversity (CEIP Juan Sobrarias 1 and 2, Spain), to the study of duckweed to sequester carbon dioxide (Espiciencia detectives del clima, Spain) we were also very impressed with the fantastic and inspirational work done by these teams of young Climate Detectives!
Congratulations to everyone who took part!
ESA thanks all the Climate Detectives student teams and their teachers for their effort and great journey and encourages them to continue to make a difference!
All projects shared with the ESA Climate Detectives community are available on the project gallery.
Climate Detectives is a school project for students between the ages of 8 and 19 run by the European Space Agency (ESA) in collaboration with the national European Space Education Resource Offices (ESEROs).