Solar Terminator

Solar Terminator

 

The Results are In

Thank you for submitting Solar Terminator observations during the special intense observation period (IOP). The goal was to identify cases where  geostationary satellites (or GEO) are falsely identifying cloud coverage during the solar terminator. This was done by comparing citizen scientists' observed total cloud cover with the GEO satellites’ total cloud cover.

Ryan Moore, an undergraduate researcher and NASA intern, was a member of the team analyzing the satellite and citizen science data. Listen to Ryan describe his research in the video below, or watch a longer version of the presentation.

 

Without the help of citizen scientists all over the world, this problem would have been much more difficult to solve! The variables reported and photos captured for this special IOP were extremely accurate. This allowed us to easily identify cases of satellite false cloud detection during the terminator. Due to the great work of citizen scientists, the new SatCORPS algorithm can be confidently applied to the GOES-16 satellite data. In the future, it will be applied to the rest of the satellites in the geostationary constellation.

Read more about this in The Solar Terminator Problem blog.