NASA wants your help checking its satellites — so send in your cloud pics
NASA is asking all cloud gazers to snap photos of the sky and share them with the space agency via an app. The citizen science project is needed to validate data from six Earth-observing instruments on different satellites. And it’s likely to make #CloudTwitter incredibly happy.
The instruments are part of a project called Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES), which aims to better understand what roles clouds play in global climate change, among other things. Clouds, however, are sometimes hard to identify from up high. For example, thin, wispy cirrus clouds, the most common type of high cloud, are difficult to spot against a background of snow, according to NASA. That’s why satellite observations need to be compared with...