Ishika Sharma and Ansh Kumar discuss Sky Scouts with the US Department of Energy’s Gary Geernaert.
Climate researchers and their elementary-aged children announced Sky Scouts, a new K-12 climate education platform, at the 2025 American Meteorological Society’s (AMS) annual meeting in New Orleans.
Climate science is elementary, and fun
Sky Scouts is the brainchild of Ashish Sharma, climate and urban sustainability lead at DPI, who leads the DPI Climate Hub and has a joint appointment in the Environmental Science Division at Argonne National Laboratory. His daughter Ishika is a fourth-grader at Nancy Young Elementary School in Aurora, Illinois. Sharma collaborated with Rajesh Kumar, a project scientist with the National Center for Atmospheric Research and Kumar’s son Ansh, a fifth-grader at Silver Creek Elementary School in Thornton, Colorado.
The project aims to make climate science — and science in general — fun for young students by helping them see the correlations between scientific data and their own observations.
Sharma and Kumar piloted the program during the summer of 2024, installing ambient weather stations in their backyards in the suburbs of Chicago and Denver, respectively. The weather stations monitor both meteorological conditions and indoor/outdoor air quality.
Ishika and Ansh watched the daily weather changes — both through the weather station readings and by looking at the environment around them — and recorded their experiences through handwritten notes, drawings, and pictures. As they began to understand the relationship between the weather station readings and the conditions they experienced, their awareness of weather patterns and climate systems grew.
How it works
Sky Scouts’ website allows each student to create their own profile with their city — their specific geolocation will not be available. As frequently as they like, they can upload data about the weather in their area. The site will feature live data displays and story maps of the students’ experiences, which they can share with each other.
For example, Ishika’s entry from August 15 reads, in part: “Today’s temperature: 76.8 degrees. 65% humidity. Today it has been so humid. My mom’s car was really wet, and it did not even rain.”
The project not only sparked curiosity about climate and environmental issues but also encouraged them to share their experiences with peers.
Ansh, who has always liked science, had noticed the impact of wildfires, hurricanes, and other extreme weather events in the United States.
“I want to learn how weather affects my home,” he said. “I learned that there were fires in California and Canada this summer. But my home was only affected by rain and the snow, and not by hurricanes or tornadoes.”
What’s next
Sharma hopes to develop a climate education program starting at the elementary school level. “If we want to teach climate change and what it means, we need to start with our own children,” he said. “Since they are the ones who will be facing these challenges in the future, they need to understand them now.”
The program would include a school curriculum around Sky Scouts, with appropriate lessons for each grade level and more rigorous activities for middle and high school students.
In fact, Ishika has already participated in a project with Argonne, a frequent collaborator with DPI. Through Community Research on Climate and Urban Science (CROCUS), a U.S. Department of Energy Urban Integrated Field Laboratory established by Argonne with help from academic and community organizations and civic and industry champions, she launched weather balloons, learning how scientists measure temperatures high in the atmosphere. Sky Scouts and the weather station helped her bring those lessons down to earth, literally, by helping her understand how atmospheric conditions played out in observable weather in her backyard.
Ishika said her enjoyment of science has grown through the project, and hopes future Sky Scouts agree with her that “science is a really cool subject.” More students participating will mean more data for them to work with, but she’s also just looking forward to building community and talking with students around the country about the weather where they live.
“If someone is from Texas,” she said, “They will say, ‘We never have snow. It’s so cool that you’ve experienced it.’”
Eventually, the Sky Scouts program will be seeking grant funding to make the program more widely accessible, but they’ve already received one vote of support. Impressed by Ishika’s “courage and dedication” in presenting at the AMS conference, Postersmith agreed to print the project’s display poster for free.
Check out the Sky Scouts website at https://www.climate-dpi.org/sky-scouts/.
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Ishika Sharma explains Sky Scouts at the AMS conference.
Author: Jeanie Chung