On 21 August 2017, North America witnessed a total solar eclipse, with the path of totality passing across the United States from coast to coast. The major public interest in the event inspired the Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment (GLOBE) Observer to organize a citizen science observing campaign to record the meteorological effects of the eclipse. Participants at 17 585 observing sites collected 68 620 temperature observations and 15 978 cloud observations. With 7194 sites positioned in the path of totality, participants provide a nearly unbroken record of the cloud and temperature effects of the eclipse across the contiguous United States. The collection of both temperature and cloud observations provides an opportunity to quantify the cloud–temperature relationship. The unique character of citizen science, which provides data from a large number of observations with limited quality control, requires a method that leverages the large number of observations. By grouping observing sites along the path of totality by 1° longitude bins, the errors from individual sites are averaged out and the meteorological effects of the eclipse can be determined robustly. The data reveal a distinct relationship between prevailing cloud cover and the eclipse-induced temperature depression, in which overcast conditions reduces the temperature depression by about one-half of the value from clear conditions. A comparison of the GLOBE results with mesonet data allows a test of the robustness of the citizen science results. The results also show the great benefit that research using citizen science data receives from increased numbers of participants and observations.

Climate and reanalysis models contain large water and energy budget errors over tropical land related to the misrepresentation of diurnally forced moist convection. Motivated by recent work suggesting that the water and energy budget is influenced by the sensitivity of the convective diurnal cycle to atmospheric state, this study investigates the relationship between convective intensity, the convective diurnal cycle, and atmospheric state in a region of frequent convection—the Amazon. Daily, 3‐hourly satellite observations of top of atmosphere (TOA) fluxes from Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System Ed3a SYN1DEG and precipitation from Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission 3B42 data sets are collocated with twice daily Integrated Global Radiosonde Archive observations from 2002 to 2012 and hourly flux tower observations. Percentiles of daily minimum outgoing longwave radiation are used to define convective intensity regimes. The results indicate a significant increase in the convective diurnal cycle amplitude with increased convective intensity. The TOA flux diurnal phase exhibits 1–3 h shifts with convective intensity, and precipitation phase is less sensitive. However, the timing of precipitation onset occurs 2–3 h earlier and the duration lasts 3–5 h longer on very convective compared to stable days. While statistically significant changes are found between morning atmospheric state and convective intensity, variations in upper and lower tropospheric humidity exhibit the strongest relationships with convective intensity and diurnal cycle characteristics. Lastly, convective available potential energy (CAPE) is found to vary with convective intensity but does not explain the variations in Amazonian convection, suggesting that a CAPE‐based convective parameterization will not capture the observed behavior without incorporating the sensitivity of convection to column humidity.

The NOAA operational total precipitable water (TPW) anomaly product is available to forecasters to display percentage of normal TPW in real time for applications like heavy precipitation forecasts. In this work, the TPW anomaly is compared to multilayer cloud frequency and vertical structure. The hypothesis is tested that the TPW anomaly is reflective of changes in cloud vertical distribution, and that anomalously moist atmospheres have more and deeper clouds, while dry atmospheres have fewer and thinner clouds. Cloud vertical occurrence profiles from the CloudSat 94-GHz radar and the Cloud–Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations (CALIPSO) are composited according to TPW anomaly for summer and winter from 2007 to 2010. Three geographic regions are examined: the North Pacific (NPAC), the tropical east Pacific (Niño), and the Mississippi Valley (MSVL), which is a land-only region. Cloud likelihood increases as TPW anomaly values increase beyond 100% over MSVL and Niño. Over NPAC, shallow boundary layer cloud occurrence is not a function of TPW anomaly, while high clouds and deep clouds throughout the troposphere are more likely at higher TPW anomalies. In the Niño region, boundary layer clouds grow vertically as the TPW anomaly increases, and the anomaly range is smaller than in the midlatitudes. In summer, the MSVL region resembles Niño, but boundary layer clouds are observed less frequently than expected. The wintertime MSVL results do not show any compelling relationship, perhaps because of the difficulties in computing TPW anomaly in a very dry atmosphere.

Capsule Summary GLOBE Spring Cloud Challenge, a citizen science engagement event, resulted in a global dataset of 55,000+ cloud observations with coincident-satellite data by volunteers across all continents and in hard-to-observe regions.