NASA, Joni Mitchell, and Me: Seeing the Sky Anew
Both Sides, Now
Joni Mitchell wrote the winsome lyrics to her folk-pop classic song, Both Sides, Now while she was up in an airplane. She is quoted as saying, “I was reading Saul Bellow’s Henderson the Rain King on a plane, and early in the book, Henderson, the Rain King, is also up in a plane. ….and he looks down and he sees these clouds.” Mitchell was in her 20s at the time, a budding, unknown musician. She said, “I put down the book, looked out the window and saw clouds too, and I immediately started writing the song. I had no idea that the song would become as popular as it did.”
You’ve likely heard the song. Below are a few lines from the happy yet sad tune.
“I've looked at clouds from both sides now
From up and down and still somehow
It's cloud illusions I recall
I really don't know clouds at all.”
(Copyright laws forbid me from sharing all the lyrics even though I’d like to. Here is a link to the Judy Collins cover of the song that was used in Toy Story 4.) The song, a quintessential Top 10 hit that you’ll likely enjoy humming all day, is a great lead-in to my community science offering this week.
If you like the idea of seeing clouds from both sides, you are going to love NASA’s GLOBE Observer for Clouds, an app-based program that depends on volunteer community scientists to help professional scientists document what’s happening with clouds. NASA has satellites orbiting 500 miles above the ground, constantly taking pictures down at the clouds. Clouds are important to climate scientists because they help regulate the Earth’s temperature by trapping or blocking the sun’s energy. These named NASA satellites (Terra, Nova, Aqua and a few others) can only capture a top-down picture of our planet. To form a more complete picture, NASA needs pictures from down below shooting up, so that’s where I come in as a faithful volunteer scientist. Picture me, down in my front yard on a bright Hot-Lanta day, maybe I’m humming Joni Mitchell, maybe I’m not, but for sure I’m taking pictures of the sky to help the progression of science.
You learn what you help investigate.
If you decide to join me as a NASA volunteer, you’ll find it fairly easy to get started and you can take your education as far as you want because the NASA GLOBE Observer website offers helpful and educational tutorials, videos and articles. While spending a few hours at the site learning, I listened to a talk by NASA scientist Jessica Taylor who started her career as a cloud volunteer scientist. She focused her presentation around six key words, saying: “You learn what you help investigate.” I say “amen” to that. I can hardly believe how much hands-on learning I’ve experienced this year as I’ve explored science efforts that need everyday people to help out. Lately, I’ve been on a cloud kick and the big benefit I’ve seen so far is that I’m paying closer attention to our sky. So blue sometimes. And so changeable, which is one of the main reasons NASA gives for why it needs sky data: cloud patterns are always changing.
Letting Cirrus, Cumulus and Stratus Be the Guide
Primary school kids are taught there are three basic cloud types: cirrus, cumulus and stratus. I’ll use those types as a framework to teach you some basics about NASA GLOBE Observer.
Cirrus clouds, the high and wispy ones. Think of NASA satellite flyovers, which also happen high in the atmosphere just like Cirrus clouds. As a NASA cloud volunteer, I now know that when an orbiting satellite goes over my location, I need to get busy. I’ve installed the NASA app on my phone, and now I sometimes get texts like this:
Upcoming Terra Flyover!
Terra will be overhead at 11:49 a.m.
Go outside and record a clouds
observation now!
I always smile at the exclamation marks in the text because writers are cautioned to use them sparingly, but NASA just goes for it. Oh nice, I think when I’m pinged with this energetic call-to-action. Now, let me go outside and take a minute for community science. If I can, I stop what I’m doing, walk outside and look up. It’s fun to imagine Terra (or Aqua or NOAA-20) up there doing its thing. NASA only sends the one silent text for each flyover––no hounding, no reminding––it’s okay if you can’t make this one seems to be the message, there will be other chances. Completing an observation is simple:
A. Open the GLOBE app.
B. Answer a few questions about the weather and what you see in the sky.
C. Take six pictures, one in each cardinal direction, plus one straight up and one straight down. When I position my camera properly, the app takes the pictures automatically, sort of like how banking apps snap images of your check for deposit. A few snaps and DONE!
2. Cumulus clouds, the floating puff-balls on a nice day. Connect cumulus clouds with NASA’s needs to know about the color of the sky. The app will ask me to ask myself: Just exactly what kind of blue am I looking at here? I enjoy choosing the color, and I like the fact that I now pay more attention to the hue of the sky no matter what I’m doing outside.
Last week, I conducted an experiment. I’m part of an outdoors exercise group that my neighbor ladies and I started early in the pandemic. These women are my gal pals now and they’ll always have an opinion. For the experiment, I asked five of them to individually (and privately) look at the sky one afternoon and to choose the color using the NASA chart. Results were two blues, two light blues and one pale blue.
“I guess I’ll go with light blue,” I told them as I typed the color into the app for that afternoon’s sky observation.
“Well, over there on that side of the sky, it is pale blue––cornflower-ish, but look right here, there’s a real deep blue-blue,” one said.
“Yes,” another added. “Like we need a halfway score, in between baby blue and plain everyday true blue.
“And now it is changing over there. Ten minutes ago, I think it was lighter.”
The little test made me think about subjectivity in data, and I realized that NASA needs many, many volunteer observations to get good aggregate information. As we sweated through our dips, squats and planks, my peeps kept talking about the sky for a long time, and I think it made us all feel expansive and happy. We tried to remember the last time we’d seen the “deep blue,” in the sky as defined in the NASA chart.
“If anyone sees that, that real deep blue, take a picture and share it,” I told them.
3. Stratus Clouds, low and gray. Associate Stratus clouds with the difficulties we face with climate change. Here is NASA’s short answer about clouds and climate: “Clouds play an important role in both warming and cooling our planet. Clouds give us a cooler climate on Earth than we would enjoy without clouds. However, as Earth's climate warms, we won't always be able to count on this cooling effect.” Today, at any given moment, about two-thirds of our planet is covered by clouds but new research suggests that greenhouse gases are reducing or eliminating the sky’s clouds which could drastically speed up the pace of global warming over the next century.
If you are now thinking you may want to join me as a NASA volunteer for the clouds, let me add this: it is one of my very favorite community science projects of all time. Why? It is partly because I feel like I’m in on “breaking news” that’s positive, something that is as rare as a Fallstreak Hole. I like when I get the text about the satellite, I like taking a sky break to look up, and I appreciate how NASA gives me feedback on my work. If I’ve successfully matched my photos with a satellite––I have about a 15-minute window to get the job done––I’ll hear from NASA in an email the next day. Here’s an excerpt of the message:
Dear Citizen Scientist,
Thank you for your NASA GLOBE cloud observation! The NASA GLOBE Clouds Team matched your cloud observation with corresponding satellite data. The satellite match is based on the time and location of your cloud report. You can learn more about how to understand your satellite match at GLOBE Clouds Satellite Comparison. Thank you for your cloud report! We look forward to your continued observations. Your observations help NASA scientists better understand what is happening in the atmosphere from your unique point of view.The NASA GLOBE Cloud Team
I hope my descriptions here, which don’t spell out all aspects of the program, give you the idea you’d like to join me as a volunteer observer. It only takes 4-5 minutes per observation. Right now, there are some 100,000 Earthlings from 89 countries who volunteer as NASA cloud observers. Join us and let your hands-on learning begin.
Clouds That Look Like Things
Do you know about the Cloud Appreciation Society? Started in the UK in 2005, the group is for anyone who loves the sky. When you join, you get a certificate that declares you will “henceforth seek to persuade all who’ll listen of the wonder and beauty of clouds.” To inspire you, I now present a gallery of photos from the “Clouds That Look Like Things” portion of the Society’s website.
Coming up:
I’ll doing community science during BRAG (Bike Ride Across Georgia) next week. During the week, I plan to have a few photo galleries for you as I wheel my way across part of our state and camp out (three nights in a row) under the stars!
Fireflies, butterflies and dragonflies are on my mind these days. I’m trying to get good at getting photos of them as they fly. Which is not easy. If you have some recent wildlife photos, please share them with me at my email address: pkzendt@gmail.com.
The weekly publication schedule I’ve stuck with so far this year is changing. This summer I’ll spend more time immersed in longer projects, so if you don’t see a newsletter every single week, no worries, it will be coming along soon!
I love reading your posts. Good luck on your bike ride.