NASA GLOBE Clouds: Documentation on How Satellite Data is Collocated to Ground Cloud Observations

The NASA GLOBE Clouds team at NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, USA receives all overhead cloud reports from human observers submitted through the GLOBE (Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment) Program. The ground-based cloud observations submitted through various protocols and methods, including the GLOBE Observer mobile app, are then collocated with satellite observations of clouds from various Earth-observing platforms, a process referred to as a satellite comparison. This document is a guide to how the ground-satellite collocation or satellite comparison is done by the team. A full description of The GLOBE Program’s dataset can be found in the GLOBE Data Users Guide.