S'COOL Rover is proud to announce that we are receiving observations from the ship "Ocean Watch" as it circumnavigates North and South America starting on May 31, 2009. The Around the Americas voyage will last approximately one year.
Welcome to NASA Langley Research Center's cloud observation project, S'COOL. This site
provides all the information that you need to make and report a cloud observation at a
non-permanent (i.e., roving) observation site, such as a field trip, vacation, or just an occasional observation from your backyard.
We welcome participation from any interested
observers, especially from places where official weather observations are few and far between.
Follow the links above to get satellite overpass times, learn about making observations,
report an observation, and explore the database of reported observations (which will include
corresponding satellite data once they are available). A Tutorial can help you get started.
For permanent, school or museum-based observation sites, please visit the main web page for the project, Students'
Cloud Observations On-Line, to register to participate.
S'COOL is a project that aims to collect data on cloud type, height, cover and related conditions from all over the world. Observations are sent to NASA for comparison to similar information obtained from satellite. Reports from a wide range of places are helpful to assess the satellite data under different conditions.
Many people take for granted how powerful clouds are in our atmosphere. It is clouds, in part, that affect the overall temperature and energy balance of the Earth. The more we know about clouds, the more we will know about our Earth as a system. The S'COOL observations help us to validate satellite data and give us a more complete picture of clouds in the atmosphere and their interactions with other parts of the integrated global Earth system.
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