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500th SCHOOL JUST SIGNED UP
Students around the world are studying clouds for NASA
If the forecast is cloudy, there
will be a chance of learning at Ramstein American Middle
School.
The school, at Ramstein Air Base
in Germany, is the 500th site to register as part of a global
cloud-measuring project. It teams up students with NASA scientists
so they can figure out how clouds affect the Earth's energy
balance.
The Students' Cloud Observations
On-Line (S'COOL) activity is part of a satellite experiment in
conjunction with NASA Langley Research Center's Clouds and the
Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES) instruments. NASA Langley
researchers are training students worldwide to observe clouds.
There are currently 378 U.S. schools involved in the project.
S'COOL schools take field notes in all 50 states (90 in Virginia)
including Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico, Guam, in 37 other
countries and on all continents except Antarctica.
The Ramstein students will learn
how to observe clouds and send their data to a NASA computer. The
students' observations then will be compared to those from orbiting
CERES instruments. CERES uses its vantage point from space to
provide global data on the Earth's energy balance and how clouds
change it. CERES instruments are currently aboard the Tropical
Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) and Terra satellites.
For more information on-line about
S'COOL, CERES, TRMM or Terra visit the following web sites: http://asd-www.larc.nasa.gov/SCOOL,
http://asd-www.larc.nasa.gov/ceres/ASDceres.html, http://trmm.gsfc.nasa.gov/,
and http://terra.nasa.gov/.
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