Citizen Scientists

Volunteers of all ages can contribute to the GLOBE Program. There are thousands of volunteer citizen scientists in the GLOBE community who gather and submit measurements using the program’s protocols. These data are freely available to be used by students, teachers, researchers and other citizen scientists in their studies on Earth science and our shared environment.

Citizen scientists primarily interact with GLOBE through the GLOBE Program’s free app, GLOBE Observer. With the app, observers document and submit data on clouds, mosquito habitats, land cover, trees, and as appropriate, eclipses. Citizen scientists also participate in data challenges created by NASA, GLOBE, and other scientific and educational institutions.

Before they begin submitting data, citizen scientists receive brief in-app training for each GLOBE Observer protocol. Additionally, the app guides data collection to ensure accurate and reliable measurements. This ensures that students or scientists using this data can be confident in the results of their projects.

Citizen scientist volunteers can freely access all of GLOBE’s protocol resources, such as educational activities, publications and the data retrieval/visualization systems. In the United States, citizen scientists can also complete GLOBE eTraining to contribute data for all GLOBE protocols and protocol bundles beyond those included in the GLOBE Observer app.