The NASA GLOBE Clouds team never imagined this time last year that we'd be holding our GLOBE 2020 Community Cloud Challenge in the midst of a global pandemic. But GLOBE is about community and showing how science is better together!
In the four weeks of the challenge, we had the opportunity to learn how eight different NASA scientists study clouds to better understand our atmosphere and the important role citizen science observations play in that. You also had the chance to learn about cloud-related activities from six different amazing GLOBE educators.
And considering the circumstances, the number of cloud observations we received from you was still something to be excited about. We received more than 26,000 observations from more than 80 countries around the world. That's about half what we got during last year's fall challenge. To put it in better perspective, though: That's still almost double the amount of observations we received in July and August of 2019. These data points are incredibly useful as we measure how clouds vary globally across seasons. Learn more how your cloud observations are used in research through this video by NASA Scientist Dr. Brant Dodson.
We also wanted to commend challenge participants for all the great photos and artwork we received, some of which are highlighted in the thank you video at the top of this page.
Thanks again for all your wonderful contributions this year. Here's a breakdown of the observations we received:
Total number of cloud observations: 26,460
Total number of satellite matches: 27,269
Total photos received (or observations with photos?): 66,229
