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GSL’s SOS team offers new educational tours on SOS Explorer™ mobile app

The Global Systems Laboratory’s (GSL) Science On a Sphere® (SOS) team has launched educational tours on its free mobile app – SOS Explorer™ (SOSx) including post-tour exercises for students. You can find the tours here: https://sos.noaa.gov/education/sosx-tours/

Science On a Sphere Explorer™ datasets can be quite complex. Tours guide users through a story using science datasets in a way that makes them understandable and more tangible. Tours incorporate supplemental media – images, videos, audio, webpages – as well as text and questions to support user learning.

The Science On a Sphere Explorer™ mobile app tours have been a great collaboration between multiple line offices. For example: “Tour – Monster Saharan Dust Plume” was a collaboration with Atlantic Oceanic and Meteorological Laboratory (AOML). The GSL Finite-Volume Cubed Sphere – Chemistry (FV3 Chem) – Saharan Air Layer is another tour that uses a National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS) video and GOES imagery provided by the NESDIS Viz Lab.

More tours to come

  • GSL: “Tour – HRRR-Smoke Tracks 2020 Fire Air”
  • NESDIS: “Tour – Eyes on Earth: Dust, Smoke, and Pollution”
  • An SOS team original: “Tour – Did Staying Home Help the Environment?” (a look at the environment during the COVID stay-at-home orders).

Do you have an idea for a tour? Reach out to hilary.peddicord@noaa.gov

Last Update: September 10, 2020

Our Mission

Lead research and directed development through the transition of environmental data, models, products, tools, and services to support commerce, protect life and property, and promote a scientifically literate public.

Research Areas

Organizational Excellence, Earth System Prediction, Advanced Technologies, and Decision Support are the foundation to achieving the GSL Grand Challenge: Deliver actionable global storm-scale prediction and environmental information through advanced technologies to serve society.

Global Systems Laboratory