Current Global Measurement Campaigns & IOPs

Scientists and educators in Alaska and Oregon and the NASA Terrestrial Hydrology Program invite anyone in the Northern Hemisphere to observe snow throughout February. Share your view of snow - or lack of snow - in your community. Not everyone has your unique view of the snow from your location on Earth.

Snow is part of the local and global water cycle. A snow crystal forms in a cloud, high in the atmosphere, and falls when it becomes heavy. As the snow crystal falls, it may be intercepted by a tree or structure, where it changes due to the temperature, wind, or other factors.

In this IOP, everyone in the GLOBE community can learn about snow by observing and photographing snow with the GLOBE Program's application, GLOBE Observer - Cloud, Tree and Land Cover tools. With a measuring device like a ruler, anyone can measure the depth of snow. If there's no snow but should be, please take data anyway. 

GLOBE is committed to environmental education and data literacy, and understanding the environment on local, regional and global scales.  Exploring past data alongside present data is important in measuring environmental changes at all scales and planning for the future. The purpose of this year-long campaign is to take a deep-dive into the last 30 years of GLOBE data. The GLOBE Program encourages participants, specifically GLOBE students, to consider what environmental changes are emerging in their local ecosystems through collecting and analyzing environmental data via GLOBE protocols across all four GLOBE spheres, exploring GLOBE learning activities and using GLOBE databases. Investigations exploring paired data, collected in the past and now is particularly encouraged.

The 30 Years of GLOBE campaign will connect with other GLOBE campaigns happening around the world. Students are encouraged to share what they learn at the 2025 International Virtual Science Symposium (IVSS). Students may also participate in the campaign by submitting their project to a regional Student Research Symposium (SRS) as well as other GLOBE student symposia. 

Created in conjunction with NASA's ICESat-2 satellite launch, the Trees Around the GLOBE Campaign focuses on providing ground-truth tree height measurements for NASA scientists. By studying the height of the trees in a particular area, researchers can construct 3D models of a forest's canopy, informing them on a number of environmental factors from the land's carbon and to how the ecosystem itself functions.

In this campaign, participants can gather data on the tree height in their local habitat as well as baseline measurements like air and surface temperature.

A global collaboration between scientists, local governments, public health officials, and the GLOBE community, Mission Mosquito focuses on monitoring changes in the frequency, range and distribution of potential disease vector mosquitoes. By combining ground-truth mosquito larvae measurements with NASA satellite data, researchers can determine important information about mosquito habitats that local governments can then use for public health initiatives.

In this campaign, participants can use the GLOBE Observer Mosquito Habitat Mapper mobile app to photograph bodies of standing water, determine the number and species of mosquito larvae present, take a Land Cover observation also, and, if possible-dump or tip water in containers.

Led by the University of Toledo, the Urban Heat Island Effect-Surface Temperature IOP focuses on studying the impacts of urbanization on Earth's temperature. By comparing the surface temperatures of different types of land cover in your area, scientists can start to determine how land cover influences the various interactions in our atmosphere.

In this IOP, students can set up comparative measurement sites between paved and grassy areas, terrestrial and aquatic area, or any other area of contrasting land cover.