Greenwave Project 2009 a huge success!

A total of 337 primary schools took part in the Greenwave 2009 project – a mass science experiment for Irish national schools which involves tracking the movement of spring across Ireland. Students from participating schools were asked to record the ash, horse chestnut and hawthorn trees, the primrose, the swallow and frogspawn. This year, participants were also asked to record the rainfall throughout the months of February to May. Scoil Chaitríona Junior from Renmore, County Galway was selected as the winning school for a nationwide photography competition run as part of the Greenwave programme for their picture of a frogspawn sighting. In total, 834 sightings were submitted by 337 Primary School classes from across the country.
Some of the findings by schools included:
• The first swallow was spotted on 2nd April
• The highest average weekly rainfall was between 5th-12th April, with an average of 31.69mm recorded
• The warmest average weekly temperature, 12.13 degrees Celsius, was recorded between 24th-31st May
Commenting on the results, Eanna Ni Lahmna, said, “The results over the three years that Greenwave is running now show that Spring is arriving earlier particularly in the south west where frogs are now spawning in January. The wealth of results sent in by schools from all over the country are providing very useful baseline data on climate change.”
Peter Brabazon, Programme Director of Discovery Science & Engineering, added, “The success of this year’s Greenwave project is evident in the amount of children participating from all over the country. It is fantastic to see children taking such an interest in their locality while also learning valuable skills such as data gathering and measurement. The program is a great way of engaging children through nature in developing skills that they will use in second level education”.
Every year a green wave, which is caused by the opening of buds on trees and hedges, can be seen moving across Europe from outer space in springtime. It begins in the south of Europe in February and it moves up across Europe as temperatures rise. The phenomenon travels at approximately the same speed as humans walk – four miles per hour – hence the description of a green wave. According to this, spring would take three weeks to walk across Ireland from Mizen Head to Malin head.