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Clouds! The Science, the Wonder & Why NASA Needs You. · Atmosphere with Emily Gracey

• Cloud Obs: When was the last time you went outside and really looked at the clouds? Not to check the weather, just to look up. Clouds can be beautiful, peaceful, even magical. And of course, a towering cumulus can also be a little bit intimidating. But what if those clouds you're watching could actually help NASA? You don't need to buy anything special, you can just go outside. Have the app on your phone and then use it, and then you filled in a gap that I have no other way to fill. Think about that. We have satellites orbiting hundreds of miles above the Earth, collecting extraordinary amounts of information about our atmosphere. But there's something they can't do. We have a very different perspective than the space satellites looking back down on Earth. We're seeing The bottom side of the clouds versus the top of the clouds. And inherently there's just things that people can do really well that sometimes satellites struggle with. And there's another benefit to all this. It's definitely g good for the soul, I think, to be out in nature. It's relaxing and it's a good reminder. Let's take five minutes, just go outside and just, you know, breathe deeply and look around. Today on the atmosphere how something As simple as looking up at the clouds can connect us to nature, contribute to real scientific research, and remind us that even in this age of incredible technology, science still needs people. I'm Meteorologist Emily Gracie, and this is Atmosphere, a podcast where science becomes conversation. Each week I sit down with the experts behind the forecasts, the research, and the headlines to explore not just the science, but the human stories behind it. Through natural curiosity, we're making science more understandable, more relatable, and hopefully bringing a little more comfort in how we experience the world around us. Hi everyone, welcome to Atmosphere. I'm Meteorologist Emily Gracie. Before we get started, a quick thank you to our founding sponsor, Weather100, for supporting independent science storytelling. And whatever platform you're listening on right now, please subscribe or follow Atmosphere. It's the best way you can support the show. Today we're talking about clouds and not just how beautiful or fascinating they are, but how much scientists are still trying to learn about them. NASA's PACE satellite launched in 2024, equipped with some remarkable technology to study our oceans, atmosphere, and land. But as powerful as these instruments are, there are still limitations to what they can see from space. That's where we come in. Through NASA's Globe Observer program, people all over the world are collecting cloud observations using nothing more than their smartphones. And that information is helping scientists improve the way satellites detect and study clouds. My guests today are Dr. Andy Sayer, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, who works with NASA's PACE mission, and Jessica Taylor from NASA Langley, who works with the Globe Clouds Program. We'll talk about what makes clouds so difficult to study, how you can contribute to NASA's research. And why taking a few minutes to appreciate the sky might be just as valuable for you as it is for science. Guys, for coming on today to talk about these two big acronyms. So we know that NASA loves some acronyms, so this is gonna be exciting. Let's start. I want to start by giving people a little background on what PACE is. I think we heard about it in the news a couple of years ago when it was launched, and then we haven't really heard too much since. So Dr. Sayer, can you give me a little bit of a background here on what this satellite does? Sure. So PACE stands for Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, Ocean Ecosystem. because as you say, NASA loves acronyms. And the sort of the clue is in the name, right? That's two words about the the sky, which is aerosols and clouds, and two two parts about the ocean. So that's plankton and ocean ocean ecosystem. So it was kind of inherently designed as this multidisciplinary earth science satellite. So the idea behind pace is to like not only continue some of the earth science dec data records that NASA's been generating for for a few decades now, but really to take the next step in advancing the the the types of data products and improving the accuracy beyond what we've been able to do before. And when people think of satellites, especially weather satellites, they they probably think of goes, right? Like what we see on the news. can you explain how this one works a little bit differently? Yeah, so GOE is the the G stands for geostationary and that tells you what orbit it's in. So there are there's a bunch of geostationary satellites above the globe, and they kind of sit and from their point of view, they just stare at this one disk of the earth. PACE is what we call in a polar orbit and sun synchronous orbit. So it's lot closer to the Earth than GOES is, and a different orbit basically means that instead of just seeing One disk every 10 minutes or so, it sees the whole world over the course of a day. the fact that the orbit is lower also means that the pixels tend to be a bit smaller, which means that you tend to resolve a bit more fine detail than you could in the higher up orbit. So these two kind of types of orbit are very complementary because obviously, if you want to track something in real time, like a major storm, a hurricane. And having the geostationary advantage where you're just getting these snapshot after snapshots great. But you're you're missing out on everything that's not in the disk. So these polar satellites kind of give you this consistent record that helps fill in gaps and tie together different geostationary sensors. Okay. So this is one part of the project and it merged with this other project that's been going on for a while. Jessica, can you tell me about the Globe Observer app and kind of the history behind this? Cause this is not new, right? Yeah, you're right. So the Globe Observer app itself is maybe a a decade old. so it's been about 10 years now that we have an app for that. And the for that is this larger GLOBE program, which did start out as an acronym to your point. global learning and observations to benefit the environment. and Globe has been around. for over 30 years now, and engages the public in doing environmental science connected to these NASA satellite missions. You know, in this conversation, we were saying, you know, the geostationary provides one perspective and certain types of data, polar orbit can give you some more information, and depending on the instruments. And now what we're saying is think about then. How can people on the ground contribute to, right? Because we have a very different perspective than the space satellites looking back down on Earth or looking up. and so for clouds, for example, right, we're seeing the the bottom side of the clouds versus the top of the clouds. And inherently there's just things that people can do really well that sometimes satellites struggle with, right? Like so we can tell the difference between snow cloud. Right? Because the snow's under our feet, the clouds above us. but from a satellite perspective, that can be a little challenging, right? They're both white, they're both cold. so by combining that information, you get all of those details. So early on in the program, what did did it look like people drawing pictures of clouds and like mailing them into you? How has this evolved over time? Well, that would that would have been really cool, but no. Maybe maybe we should ask for that. Yeah, yeah, we should we should ask for the the artistic rendering of it. although you you're oftentimes surprised by what sort of inspiration making these observations leads to. no, it the start of the program always was this idea that we would use a what we call a science protocol. So a list of procedures and how to collect the measurement, in this case clouds. and so over the years that's changed in terms of the exact We want someone to make the observation. But we basically have people do a lot of categorizing. So they'll tell us the cloud type, they'll tell us the percentage of cloud cover. And then they might even add some additional really important characteristics like opacity. How much light does the cloud let through? And also tells us some information about the ground, what they see on the ground. And the the Big thing that changed really in having the app available is that people can now really make photographic observations, document their sky by using the app. And what we're able to do in the app is actually there's basically an AR overlay. So that way we're having people make observations in cardinal directions so they can point north, south, east, west. up and down and this AR overlay makes sure that they're facing the right direction and that they're also have their camera angled at 14 degrees above the horizon, right? Because we we are trying to see the sky itself. and so in doing that, all of the photos have that same procedure of how they were collected. And that's really rich information that we did not have as much 30 years ago, right? Because, well, first of all, we barely We're just the the idea of making observations and submitting them through the internet was in and of itself novel then. so now the advancement of being able to use the app, collect these images, that's the really exciting part. Is there any AI being utilized in this? I know like an o ocean scientist can, you know, take pictures of the ocean and identify rip currents. Can you identify cloud types through AI? Has any of that been worked into the app? actually, really glad you asked that question because that is something we're working on right now. because I really think that the photos themselves are a real untapped, like big resource of information that we can pull from it. our team at NASA Langley did work on this a few years back and things just weren't as robust yet. but now we're really making a lot more advancements. And one of the things that we're really trying to do is Instead of guessing what a researcher wants to know out of the photographs, can we build instead the database, the library, so to speak, that then a researcher can come to us and sort of query the database of photos for things that they're interested in? So maybe it's a thin cirrus cloud, right? Those can be hard to observe by humans, but it's also really hard to observe from a satellite in different instruments. But can we say ask the database for show me images that have this like very thin cirrus type background in it and we can see all those observations and then you know the locations and you know the time that you can compare to the satellite imagery and data that we have. Cool. Okay, take me through like a situation. Let's say pace is going overhead. Dozens of people step outside, they take a picture. What does that look like, Jessica, from your end as far as what's going into the app? And then we'll go over to Andy to find out how he applies that information. Yeah. So in the app, hopefully people, when they get the app, they open it up and they see a little button after they click on clouds, because clouds are so much unto observed. We want them to click clouds and then we want them to say get satellite flyovers. So if you have your location services turned on, which you should to use the app, we know in that moment, wherever you are, your latitude and longitude, and we can send you basically different satellite overpasses. So in this case, we'll let you know when PACE is overhead. We can also tell you when NOAA 20 is overhead as well. And then people can set alerts so that way they know, all right, in 15 minutes, pace satellite's gonna be overhead. I'm gonna go outside and get ready to make an observation. I wanna find a spot where I have a decent view of the sky, as unobstructed as possible, right? From trees or buildings. and then they can basically open the app and start stepping through a list of questions, right? And the first question is: what do you see in your sky? Right? Is it a clear sky? Do you have clouds? Is there stuff blocking your view? And by stuff here we mean like, It could be dust. It could be smoke. And then they'll go through that series of questions around like the type of clouds, counting the contrails, percentage cover, and then make the take photographs as well. And then send that data that goes to the globe database. And then it also comes to us at NASA Langley and we look to see if we have satellite data from the same time and location. And then we match those data sets together. make that available publicly and for researchers like Andy, as well as then send a NASA personalized email back to the user where they get to see a comparison data table that has their observation and what the satellite data also recorded. So this way the person contributing the data can also see what we also were getting back from our satellites. And then Andy, what does it look like from your end? So if I take a one step back, the instrument we're we're using to identify clouds from from PACE's point of view is called OCI, ocean color instruments that like I said, it also monitors land very effectively. And the reason we're doing this cloud identification in the first place is because if you wanna then work out like cloud properties like water content, whether it's liquid or ice, first you need to know where the clouds are. And if you want to look at the surface, whether that's like vegetation on land or plankton in the ocean, you need to know where the clouds are not. So this kind of like cloud identification, we often call it flagging, is the first step in a lot of satellite data processing. And most of the time, unless there's snow on the ground, like Jessica mentioned, it's pretty easy because clouds are mostly fluffy, pretty bright, and they're kind of white. But where it gets tricky is in the case of broken cloudiness. And what I mean by that is because our satellite pixels are still fairly large. OCIs are about three quarters of a mile across. You can often end up in a situation where you're near the edge of a cloud. So looking down, some of the OCI pixel is is got clouds in it and another part doesn't, but we can't resolve anything f finer than our fundamental pixel size. So what I'm really hoping to to learn from this, one of the things is how much cloud does there have to be in a pixel before I identify it as a cloud using my cloud flagging technique? Right? Cause that kind of gives me like a margin of what are my we call them errors of omission. That's where there is a cloud but you don't detect it, or errors of commission, which is where there isn't a cloud but you you think there is one. I'm gonna be Basically sort of taking a a a small area average of the p of the pace observations around the time and the location that the citizen scientist takes their fi their pictures, and then basically comparing the cloud fraction that they estimate from the ground with either the the cloud mask of our very nearest pixel that physically covers their area, and then also of a slightly larger, maybe five to ten kilometers average around. We can kind of get something about the hyperlocal cloud cover and about the regional cloud cover. So I'm hoping that from this I'll learn, hey, my my satellite will say it's cloudy if it's at least 50% cloudy in this location, or maybe it's 30%, maybe it's 70%. Right now, I don't know for sure. So this is really gonna help me hone in on whatever those numbers are and how that varies with different cloud types. Sirius is often very tenuous, so it can be hard to see from space. If if it's overcast and raining outside, that's kind of pretty easy to tell. You know, these data are kind of super valuable and it's really I think a great success story that many of us are just walking around with these smartphones with these powerful cameras in our pockets, and you can literally help me and my coworkers improve our, you know, data processing techniques just by going outside and taking a photo. And that that's pretty cool, I think. It's pretty cool. Yep. could be something to put on the resume. Like I work for NASA. And in fact, the the app will give you awards based on the the the number of observations you you collect which are paired with satellite measurements. it's not a monetary award or ending, it's just like a little thing of recognition to let you all know that we we appreciate what you're doing. Nice. Yeah, everyone loves to build a streak, right, in their app. So that's our opportunity to encourage people to continue to make the observations. Yeah, like a video game almost. What is normal weather? Between dramatic headlines, record this, extreme that, and hundreds of weather apps all showing you basically the same information, it can be surprisingly hard to tell what's actually unusual. That's where Weather 100 comes in. Weather 100 is a minimalist desktop weather display that compares your local weather with the last 100 years of history, showing you how unusual it really is. From today's maximum temperature to last month's rainfall to this week's highest wind speed. Weather 100 updates every day with the latest rankings, giving you context you just don't get from a normal weather app. Every Weather 100 also includes access to the free iOS and Android app, letting you explore weather rankings for locations all around the world. Starting at $49.99 with free shipping worldwide, Weather 100 has five different models and 10 colors to choose from. And listeners of Atmosphere will get 20% off by using the code EMILY20 at checkout. That's EMI20 for 20% off your entire purchase. Weather 100, your weather in context. Okay, well, let's talk about the people who are participating. This has been going on for a few weeks now. What has participation been like? Who are the people participating? Can people still join? Yes, people can still hop on board to make these observations. so we're calling this our Pace Clouds Data Challenge, and we're asking people to make these observations through November first. But quite frankly, like nothing's gonna stop at that point in time. We'll we'll still accept observations and we still encourage people to make it. and we have had a lot of success in doing that sort of short-term ask. And so far it's been working really well because we have hundreds of new people making observations. So people who hadn't downloaded the app before, which is always great to get new people to join the globe community. and we have thousands of photos that we can take a look at already. but The whole point of this is the more the merrier. And in this case, the more observations we have, the better the data set is for Andy to take a look at that. Quite frankly, what's beautiful about Globe is sometimes we call it K to gray is a fun way of saying from kindergarten all the way to senior citizens, our K to gray spectrum of people participating. And you do see the gamut of families participating. schools have been big supporters of doing Globe, but really anyone can participate and make observations. we have a number of master naturalists that have shifted from looking down to trying to look up at the clouds. And so you see participation across all the ages, as well as from lots of different countries. So Globe has agreements in over 120 countries worldwide, which is great because in this case. as Annie was saying, pace as a polar orbiter is looking all across the globe. And so to be able to have those observations from all over Earth is really important. Yeah, it seems like a great initiative for schools. Like, you know, especially high schools, if anybody's doing a science unit, these kids have cell phones. You're like, make use of that. Yeah. and in a positive way, right? Like use your cell phone for for something. Off TikTok. Yeah. What about have you been in touch with the cloud appreciation society at all? Have they been helpful with this? I believe they posted something just a couple weeks about this, which is great. Well, can we have a little fun here since we're talking about clouds and we all love clouds so much and we're all have a background in atmospheric science? okay, I'm gonna quiz you guys on some stuff. let's start with Jessica. What is your favorite cloud type? cumulonimbus. I grew up outside of Tampa. So Lightning Capital of the World and I loved watching thunderstorms. I mean, there's nothing like the smell, the sound. It's a full body experience. All right, Andy, what's your favorite cloud? I think I'll I'll say a different kind of full body experience. if as long as I don't need to go anywhere in in my car, my favorite type of cloud is definitely fog because I think there's something really magical. whether you're You know, in a in a city at night and you've got this this this beautiful scattered glow of of of of yellow streetlights, or maybe you're in, you know, by the sea or you're in a forest. It's just it's really quite literally immersive. Yeah, that's very creative. So what's yours? Well, I was gonna say like the rare ones that you don't get to see very often, like mematis or like asperitus. Okay, what's the most as atmospheric scientists, what's kind of the most mysterious or difficult? type of cloud to study or even ob observe? The most challenging one from a a satellite remote sensing point of view, I would say is not a single cloud type, but when you've got multiple cloud layers together. Because if you've got, for example, a low marine stratocumulus deck, and then you put a thin cirrus cloud, you know, 10 kilometers above it, it looks often pretty much identical to how it would look without that cirrus cloud on the top. So it can be a real challenge from passive remote sensing like Pace is doing and like the Go sensors are doing to to sometimes detect these systems. But at the same time it can kind of sometimes mess up your attempts to measure those clouds. Going back to the example of a of a high cloud like Osiris above a marine strato cumulus, which is a you know very low cloud in the boundary layer, the the the low cloud is a lot warmer than the high cloud. So if you're measuring, for example, brightness temperature from GOES, you're gonna get an answer that's somewhere in the middle. So, you know, your data's gonna be telling you, hey, this cloud's kind of high up, when everything else is telling you, no, it's really low down. And in fact, it's both of them. And we can kind of get around that a little bit using active remote sensing, radar and lidar, but for I guess cost reasons mostly there just aren't that many of those in space. I would say that is one of my personal biggest challenges in cloud remote sensing at the moment. but you know thankfully we at least have these passive and active observations together in a way that we can even address this. Otherwise it would be, you know, not very feasible at all. Big answer. Jessica, do you have one? Unfortunately, I think about this a lot. Yeah. We have a real love-hate relationship here with the clouds. Yeah, absolutely. It does this date job too. I can absolutely appreciate, you know, a complex sky. There's so much going on. for me, a type of cloud that I've been interested observing and also seeing what our satellite comparisons have been. are that that Thin cirrus. You know, I do live by the coast, and there are days when you get an almost overcast sky of thin cirrus. But if you just look quickly at the sky, you're like, it's blue. No, but it's like a light blue, right? Because we've got this almost like thinly veiled sky. And I wouldn't call it cirrostratus, right? Because it's not necessarily. Completely uniform in the distribution of the cloud. but you do see these patches. And one of the things that I love about doing this is that the more you observe, the better at it you get, right? And the better you are at sort of picking up these little details that you see. About the sky, and those details are everything, right? That that tells us about the formation and it's tells us all sorts of stuff about the clouds. So I've been really interested when I make my own observations and I get my email back from NASA, and it's got my observations and it has some of the satellites. And we also are matching to geostationary. So basically, almost any time of day, you could go outside and and get, you know, a satellite image and some data back. And I've been fascinated to see. particularly in these thin serous moments, what the total cloud cover is estimate from the other satellites as well. and because it's like I said, it it is something that's tricky to observe, whether you're on the ground or in space. Is there benefit to having the citizen scientists like spread out or does it matter? Do you want them in different parts of the country? And if so, are there holes right now in your data where like we you could really use the people in this state or this state? It really is a case of of data anywhere is is useful. If I had like an unlimited checkbook, I would pay people to go and stand like in a regular grid spread about one kilometer apart over the whole the whole country or the whole world. That's obviously not feasible. so it is a case of just the more is better. But what what we're gonna be doing is taking the data as they come in and then the more we get, the more we can stratify it into different types. For example, we might split out here's all the observations with cirrus clouds. Here's all the observations with, you know, stratus clouds. Here's all the observations near coasts. Here's the high altitude ones. Here's the ones in urban areas, the ones in vegetated areas. Here's the ones in deserts. Here's the ones where it's snowy or where the leaves are turning brown. And kind of the the the finer details we can break it down by kind of the the more confident I can be in really understanding how well our cloud flagging techniques work. Since we're in a a polar orbiting satellite, most of the time pace is flying over around 1 pm local solar time where you are. The the SWAT is pretty wide so it can be an hour or so earlier, hour or so later. The app will tell you. But this meeters often around lunchtime. So it's kind of a good time for folks to be able to step outside. that's not why we put it in that orbit. There's other reasons, but it's a it's a nice benefit. But the point is this means like people will often during the week or during the weekend, they'll be in roughly the same place every time of day. So if we get these repeat observations from, you know, folks at work or school, as we have done, that's really great. But if you happen to be in a different place on a given day, that's not a problem at all. It's still just as, you know, just as good. Satellite is still gonna fly over, it's still gonna see the sky where you are, so we can still use it. Yep. I I've talked to people in the past who have said like there's a real direction when it comes to science of the future, especially with like gathering weather information as far as crowdsourcing. So can you talk either one of you about the value here in getting information from citizens and why this is important and other ways we might be able to gather information from people on the ground in the future? So I think the the nuance and the creativity it takes for to engage citizen scientists around the world is the appreciation for what people in the general public can contribute to science. And that's that's a lot, right? Because we cannot put instruments all over Earth. We did a huge data challenge around the solar eclipse. And that was a great example of leveraging citizen scientists because people were already going to travel to the path of totality, right? And so we were able to get thousands of observations across particularly the path of totality, where people were making observations of clouds and they were also measuring temperature. And you can see the temperature depression that happened because of the eclipse. And I think that's really the power of it is then thinking about. Okay, that data is different from a satellite. It is different from a ground station. But once you sort of accept that and then you let curiosity then take over around like, how can I leverage this? that's the beauty in it. So there's the importance. Is there benefit to the person doing this too? I can imagine it kind of gets you, first of all, educates you as the person taking these observations, but then also maybe like. takes you into nature and gives you an appreciation for the clouds that you never had before. Yeah, I I mentioned about natur master naturalists, but we had an event where people came and they gave posters around what they learned by making cloud observations with Globe. And there was a group of master naturalists and I just really appreciated how they talked about, you know, that as being a master naturalist, they've been so focused on the ground. And making observations of the ground and what's growing. And they said that this participating in making cloud observations was their opportunity to look up and see the sky and start to make that connection between weather and sky and what is on your ground. and I have one other great example is there was an observer who I mentioned, you know, we see your latitude and longitude as as you're moving around, right? And that sense of place became really important through these observations that she sent us a photo of making a pillow and stitched on it her latitude and longitude of where she likes to make her repeat observations. And it was this recognition of, you know, by making these observations of clouds or or the other elements in the app, right? So you can do land cover and trees. Understanding your sense of place. And I thought that was really beautiful that I hadn't necessarily seen that before. Yeah. I was kind of thinking the opposite of just like how small we are in this world where we're seeing, you know, the atmosphere moving above us. But that makes a lot of sense too, kind of getting to know what things tend to be like where you live. Definitely g good for the soul, I think, to be out in nature. I mean, it's it's relaxing and it's a good reminder just to hey, let's Just take five minutes. Just just go outside and just, you know, breathe deeply and look around. Awesome. Well, okay, let's say we want to help. Jessica, how do we we go to the app store? It's on all the phones. Yep. For iOS and Android devices. so you can put it on a cell phone. You can also download it to a tablet and download the app. You create your login, and then you just start making observations. there are some Some tools and resources in the app to be able to help you build your own confidence in submitting your observation. But like we were saying before, just get out there, follow the cues. There are some picture guidelines to help you make the observation. And then don't forget to send the data. People like to build up a list of observations in the app, but make sure you send the data. And sometimes that happens too because the app. can be used if you're not on Wi-Fi. So let's say you're going for a a hike, right? You have the opportunity to go for a hike and you can make your observation. You can save it in the on the app and then submit it later on if you want to. Wonderful. We'll drop the link in show notes so everybody can easily find it. Jessica, Andy, is there anything else you want to add about this amazing challenge? I hadn't really had much experience with citizen science before this. And it's really been A great reminder to me about why we do this work at all. So, you know, thanks, Jessica, for bringing me into this. And yeah, thanks, Emily, for for letting me come on and talk about it. You know, the thing I think that motivates most citizen scientists the most is the hope that their data can be useful to science, right? That that's that's why they're contributing. That's why they're taking time out of their day to do this. And so it's awesome to be able to Meet with colleagues and researchers who are curious about the data and want to make use of it. So thank you for helping to encourage the participation. A big thanks to Jessica Taylor and Dr. Andy Sayer for joining me today. If you'd like to become a cloud observer yourself, it's easy. I did it. Just download NASA's Free Globe Observer app. It's available for iPhone and Android. Select Clouds and follow the instructions to make your observations and be sure to submit your data. You can even set up notifications for when the PACE satellite will be passing overhead. I'll put the link in the show notes to help you get started. And even if you don't participate in the program, I hope this episode encourages you to spend a little more time looking up at the sky. For those who like to go beyond the audio on publishing deeper dives and behind-the-scenes content on Substack, you can find the link in the show notes as well. If you enjoyed this conversation, please follow Atmosphere on your favorite podcast platform. We're now on iHeartRadio and Amazon Music. Leaving a rating or review helps new listeners discover the show. And sharing an episode with someone who's curious about science is one of the best ways to support this independent podcast. I'm Meteorologist Emily Gracie. Thanks for taking the time to slow down, stay curious, and explore the atmosphere.