Students as Ground Observers for Satellite Cloud Retrieval Validation (Invited Presentation)

The Students' Cloud Observations On-Line (S'COOL) Project was initiated in 1997 to obtain student observations of clouds coinciding with the overpass of the Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES) instruments on NASA's Earth Observing System satellites. Over the past seven years we have accumulated nearly 5,000 cases worldwide where student observations are available within 15 minutes of a CERES observation.

This paper will report on comparisons between the student and satellite data as one facet of the validation of the CERES cloud retrievals. Comparisons will address cloud cover, cloud height, cloud layering, and cloud visual opacity. The large volume of comparisons will allow some assessment of the impact of surface cover, such as snow and ice, reported by the students.

The S'COOL observation database, accessible via the Internet at scool.larc.nasa.gov contains over 32,000 student observations and is growing by over 700 observations each month. Some of these observations may be useful for assessment of other satellite cloud products. In particular, some observing sites have been making hourly observations of clouds during the school day to learn about the diurnal cycle of cloudiness.