S’Cool is Cool!

Last week we began our Weather and Matter unit.  In this unit we will explore weather and the the role states of matter play in our water cycle.  One exciting part of this unit is collecting weather and cloud data for a NASA project called S’Cool.

S’Cool is a branch of NASA that uses satellites (aqua & terra) to investigate the role clouds play in the heating and cooling of Earth.  This project relies on children around the world to observe clouds and collect local weather data (temperature etc.) to compare to satellite data.  To prepare for this important work, we began by collecting local weather data and learning about the instruments meteorologists use to collect weather data.  We use weatherunderground.com to collect current data.  Their weather station is on Belair Drive in Colchester!

Each day S’Cool sends us the time the satellites pass over Colchester.   We must make our observations within 15 minutes of this time for the data to be valid.  Monday was our first day of collecting and uploading data into the S’cool website.  The S’Cool website has a page devoted to kids, so check it out! Ask your child to tell you what type of clouds they think are in the pictures below.  If you hover over them with your mouse, the name of the cloud will appear.