Citizen Science with NASA GLOBE

Want to contribute to NASA research or maybe just find out whether the mosquitos in your area are the disease-carrying kind? The NASA GLOBE Observer program shows us how to monitor our environment—from clouds to mosquitos—and contribute our observations to research conducted by NASA scientists. This week, Holli Kohl from NASA GLOBE sat down with me to discuss the power of citizen science, the role of clouds in our Earth’s ecosystem, and how we can use a simple app to monitor our own air quality while contributing to NASA research.

EE: I am here with Holli Kohl from NASA’s GLOBE program, short for Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment. Thank you so much for being here, Holli! Could you tell us what it is that you do at GLOBE?

Holli Kohl: I coordinate the NASA GLOBE Observer team and I work out of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Green Belt, Maryland.

EE: GLOBE Observer connects scientists to students, teachers, and anyone else looking to contribute to science and learn about the environment.

This collaboration between researchers and “citizens” or volunteers among the public to conduct scientific experiments is known as citizen science. As a scientist myself, I am super excited about citizen science projects because they mean that we scientists can think beyond ourselves when it comes to designing an experiment. As an astronomer, I can’t possibly classify tens of thousands of galaxies based on their shapes and sizes, at least not without more hours in the day. But that’s okay. I can get help from anyone who has an internet connection and at least five minutes to spare on contributing to astronomy research.

Citizen science, of course, also offers up opportunities for making science—including both the process of conducting an experiment and the resulting data—more accessible. This isn’t your high school chemistry lab homework; this is real, current, investigative research.

So Holli, can you tell me more about GLOBE and some of the citizen science that you enable?

Holli Kohl: As you said, GLOBE stands for the Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment Program which is a bit of a mouthful, but I think that the important part is the end there. The observations we are collecting is for the benefit of the environment. So we are asking people to go outside and tell us things that they observe about the environment around them that will help us understand Earth’s systems science. The program, as you mentioned, is largely student based. However, a year ago we decided to open the program up to anybody. So anyone can participate in taking some of those observations under the GLOBE Observer Program.

And GLOBE Observer is a free smartphone app. It is available in Google Play or the App Store, and it means that anyone can go outside and take observations right now of clouds and report those back to us. And those observations are then applied to science programs that help us verify what we’re learning from satellites. Other scientists can use the data as well for their own research.

EE: So what are scientists trying to learn from these cloud observations?

Holli Kohl: Clouds are one of the things that help transfer energy around our planet. So a lot of the energy from the sun comes in the tropics, and clouds, as part of the water cycle, help transfer that energy out to the poles and across the planet. They also have a really important role in maintaining our climate, our planet’s temperature. And so there are a lot of scientific questions around what happens to clouds as our atmosphere warms. And the reverse question is how do clouds impact warming in the long run? If the atmosphere is cloudier, for example, will it cool things down or are clouds going to retain more energy and make the climate warmer? It’s looking more and more like it’s the latter—that clouds actually have a positive feedback effect in that they tend to warm the atmosphere a little bit.

There are a lot of questions around what clouds roles are in the Earth’s system and that’s the sort of information that your observations help scientists understand. So what we’re doing with it is we’re taking that cloud data that you send us and we are incorporating it into our analysis of satellite data and using it as a verification that what we think is a cloud is actually a cloud. There are certain cases, particularly when the ground is very bright or light in color that it is difficult to differentiate between a cloud and the surface.

Your observations also help tell us what’s happening to clouds when we’re not looking. We do have an improved network of satellites that are kind of always looking at the same spot on Earth but a lot of our satellites are in orbit from north to south and only pass over a particular area on Earth once a day. So your observations help us fill in some of those gaps.

EE: So with GLOBE Observer, citizen scientists are not only contributing their own original cloud observations to cloud research but they are also helping verify the validity of data taken by NASA satellites. That’s very cool. Including but also extending beyond clouds, what are some of the benefits of continuing to observe our environment and our planet regularly? And for those of us with kids in our lives, should we be making an effort to involve them too?

So I’ll tackle the kids question first. GLOBE was designed for kids. It’s initially an education program. It’s only recently that we’ve opened it up to adults. So yes, go download the free GLOBE Observer app and take your kids outside and observe with them. And then encourage their teachers to look into the GLOBE program for the classroom so that they can be involved in taking environmental observations.

And the benefits of taking citizen science observations—I see really three big benefits. The first is that you increase your appreciation for the world around you. The second is that you can contribute to science. And the third is that you can improve your own quality of life.

So on the first one, I challenged myself to go take a cloud observation every single day. I haven’t been 100% successful but I have taken quite a few. And what I noticed is, when I got into the habit of taking that cloud observation, I would take my phone outside and it would ask me, “What is the percent cloud cover?” and I would tell it roughly how many clouds I saw and what kinds of clouds, and it guided me through that process. I start to, now, every time that I look at the sky, think about what I’m seeing and what it means, if I see low clouds versus high clouds. I see those clouds in a new way and they are so much more beautiful because I appreciate them more deeply. So for me that’s been a huge benefit and maybe a bit of an unexpected benefit.

I see clouds in a new way and they are so much more beautiful because I appreciate them more deeply.

We also have in the GLOBE Observer app a protocol that helps you map mosquito habitats. We’re looking for where mosquitos are breeding. I have a colleague who noticed mosquito larvae in a flower vase in her house and I don’t know if she would have noticed that if she hadn’t been doing citizen science.

And second we do use your data to verify our satellite data. In terms of mosquitos, a new project just started at NASA Goddard where you basically go outside and say, “I see mosquito larvae in a flower pot by my front door, or in the pond down the road in the park, or in a bottle cap that I found lying on the sidewalk.” You document where you saw that. You take a picture of it and you send it to us. We also show you how to sample the water and how to use a microscope to figure out what kind of mosquitos you have, if they’re one of the disease carriers. But the first part is really what we want: where are they breeding?

So our scientists are taking that and they’re using that as a verification for satellite data so they can go and say, “We know that in this area when we have this kind of rainfall which we can see from a satellite, or in this kind of plant growth or soil moisture, when we pull all that satellite data together then we know that mosquitos are breeding there.” And that can tell them if a disease outbreak is likely. So they can create these mosquito disease forecasts so that local officials then can get these forecasts and mitigate—go spray for mosquitos or take whatever measures are necessary to prevent a disease outbreak of malaria or Zika or West Nile virus.

And then that goes into the third benefit which is improving your quality of life. If you’re doing the citizen science and noticing where those mosquitos are breeding, you’re going to be able to go out and cover your swimming pool or dump the water out or pick up the trash or spray whatever it is you need to do to prevent mosquitos from breeding in your yard or around a place where your family is going to be and be exposed to those bugs. Even if you don’t get disease from them, mosquitos are no fun. So it contributes directly to your quality of life.

And in terms of the cloud observations, we do have you look at the visibility and the sky color when you take your cloud observation and that is a direct indicator of your air quality. So over time if you kind of get used to what clear air looks like versus polluted air that could help you make decisions about what kind of outdoor activities you’re going to get involved in or have your kids involved in during the day.

So citizen science is a lot of fun, it increases our appreciation of the world around us, it contributes to science, and it can improve your quality of life.

EE: So with this talk of citizen science, I have to ask one last question about the eclipse. As many as 20 million people are estimated to have watched the total solar eclipse that spanned the continental US in August, including 4.4 million people who tuned in for NASA’s live coverage. What is next for those of us who still have eclipse fever?

During the eclipse, GLOBE Observer had people across the continent taking data of air temperature changes and cloud changes. Those were just to see how cool did it get when you are standing in the Moon’s shadow. We got a lot of observations—we got 106,000 observations, a few more than that. One thing you could do if you’re still interested in some of the science that’s happening with those observations is you can follow us on Facebook or Twitter. We’ve been posting information as we do some data analysis.

And if you’re interested in learning more about what science we’re gaining from the eclipse, you can find us on Facebook at NASA Globe Observer and on Twitter at @NASAGO or you can check out our Click here for more information. We’re also posting the data itself on our website. We had so much data it’s taking us a little bit of time to format it and put it in an easy-to-use format for everybody but we’re sharing that data on our website so that anybody can go take that data and do your own analysis and look at how things changed during the eclipse.

But I think the most important thing you can do if you’re still excited about the eclipse and the science behind it is you can still go outside and take those cloud observations that you may have taken during the eclipse using the GLOBE Observer app. We need those cloud observations every day. The clouds are constantly changing and we need that data to continue to come in. So get back outside and continue to take observations and share them with us.

EE: So is that mosquito data also available on your site so that I can go check out whether or not my neighbors have been finding anything near me?

Holli Kohl: Absolutely. All of our data is available for anybody who wants to look at it. You can go to our website, observer.globe.gov, and there’s a big button right at the top that says “See the data” and that leads you to where you can go to look for data. And everything that all GLOBE students and citizen scientists collect is available so it’s not just mosquitos and clouds but GLOBE students can collect up to 50 different environmental parameters and all of that is there.

EE: That’s very cool! Well, thank you so much for your time and for telling us about the fun opportunities for citizen science offered by NASA’s GLOBE Observer program.  

Until next time, this is Sabrina Stierwalt with Ask Science’s Quick and Dirty Tips for helping you make sense of science. You can become a fan of Ask Science on Facebook or follow me on Twitter, where I’m @QDTeinstein. If you have a question that you’d like to see on a future episode, send me an email at everydayeinstein@quickanddirtytips.com.

Image courtesy of nasa.gov