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S'COOL E-note for May, 2006

Greetings and welcome to the third monthly email of news from S'COOL.

THIS MONTH'S NOTE INCLUDES:

1) Successful launch of Cloudsat & CALIPSO
2) Related snippets on Earth & Sky
3) S'COOL Data Analysis
4) S'COOL and your school graduation
5) Cloud Photo of the Month

(1) Successful launch of Cloudsat & CALIPSO
Visit the MY NASA DATA Site for a beautiful photo and a description of the recent launch of these two important satellites, which are closely related to the challenges that CERES and the S'COOL Project are attempting to address.

(2) Related snippets on Earth & Sky
Dr. Chip Trepte, of the CALIPSO science team, has a brief interview with Earth & Sky.
The Earth & Sky program is a daily science-based radio series that airs all over the world. They are "a small non-profit organization committed to describing humanity's work to understand itself and its relationship to the Earth."
Also note that Brue Wielicki, the CERES Principal Investigator, is a frequent Earth & Sky guest. His most recent interview is Climate 'noise' makes change hard to notice.

(3) S'COOL Data Analysis
We have been making some improvements to this piece of the S'COOL Project, and you will hopefully notice even more changes soon. Thanks to the hard work of Tina, the S'COOL database person, we have a new search option when you interact with the S'COOL database: "Search for Only Ground Observations that have Matching Satellite Data". This option will display only student observations that have corresponding satellite cloud information. That information may be from FLASHFlux, which is updated within a week of your observation, or it may be from CERES, which is climate-quality information that may appear 6 or more months later. At the bottom of the visualization page you will find a link to "Download Observations Spreadsheet File", as well as directions and a key to understanding the file. You may also want to review the data analysis tutorial.

While upgrading the database, Tina also developed a tool for visualizing the approximately 400 cases we have (so far) where a student cloud observation corresponds to BOTH the Terra and Aqua overpass. This new capability was featured earlier this month at the CERES Science Team Meeting, as it contains some intriguing differences between Terra and Aqua. Most S'COOL teachers who have observations in this special category received an email about it earlier this month. So far, all these double matches occur between 40 and 60 N latitude. If you are located north of 40 N, or south of 40 S, you may want to watch the overpass schedules for these double matches, then visit the special visualization tool to see how the two satellites view your area.

Currently, we are working on a notification system that will send you an email each time one of your observations is matched to satellite data. The email will include a link taking you directly to the data visualization page; and will include a form for you or your students to classify and comment on the match. We hope to start testing this new system within the next few weeks. If you receive one of these emails, please take a few minutes to respond and comment about this new capability. We want to make it teacher- and student-friendly, so it will be useful.

(4) S'COOL and your school graduation
As the end of the school year approaches for many of our participants, we'd like to remind you of the certificates of recognition that are available on our website. You are welcome to print and sign these certificates, and to give them out during end of year ceremonies at your school to recognize your students' participation in the S'COOL Project. Look for the links to color and black & white certificates at the bottom of this web page.

(5) Cloud Photo of the Month
Don't forget the Cloud Photo of the Month activity. We have just put in place a new web page which will standardize the submission process, and allow you to upload your photo. We look forward to more of your interesting submissions.

As always, keep looking at the sky!

Dr. Lin Chambers - Director
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The CERES S'COOL Project - Students' Cloud Observations On-Line
http://asd-www.larc.nasa.gov/SCOOL/ scool@lists.nasa.gov
Tel.: (757) 864-4371 Fax.: (757) 864-7996
The CERES S'COOL Project, MS 420, NASA Langley Research Center,
Hampton, VA 23681-2199
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