GLOBE Observer Design

 

Data?

The data collected by the GLOBE Observer citizen scientists are used for scientific research. There are many published works, which can be found here: https://observer.globe.gov/publications. For the GLOBE Observer - Clouds program, the collected data are mainly compared to satellite data. Since satellite imaging is collected form top-down and the citizen scientists' observations are collected from bottom-up (with reference to the clouds in the sky), combining these two data points gives NASA a much more detailed picture of the reality of the state of the sky. Here is a recent youtube video on scientific research by GLOBE Observer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8YNyO-PFWI&t=3s. 

Participation!

I have found the project design and user experience for the citizen scientists very straightforward and easy to use - which likely helps GLOBE receive more observations from volunteers! The app, and thus a smartphone, is needed to take observations, but within the app there is a lot of guidance for making observations. For the Clouds project, you have the choice between manual identifying the clouds present in the sky or you can select the guided cloud identification wizard which walks you through a set of questions to narrow down which clouds are present in the sky if you are less familiar with the clouds. For me, on days when the sky has one type of cloud, I can usually do the manual identification, but on days where there are a lot of clouds in the sky, I used the guided wizard to be sure I am selecting the correct clouds. See the photos below of the in-app experience, as you can see it is very detailed. 

One challenge I had is that I am signed up for "Germany Citizen Science," so I did not record observations while I was on a (week late) spring break trip in Ireland because I was worried of messing up my "zone."





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