Our next question comes from Kimberly Scott from Hendersonville,
as well as Matthew from Richardson. Both want to know: how does CloudSat see inside clouds and the layers of clouds?
Yeah, well this is also a good question. CloudSat flies a particular kind of radar.
It's a very different than radar that you might relate to observing weather.
It flies a radar that operates on a very much shorter wavelength, a higher frequency and is extremely sensitive.
And so, the way the radar works is as follows: it's like being in a canyon and shouting and listening for the echo.
And occasionally, you hear multiple echoes returned. So the CloudSat radar shouts very loud and shouts about 4,000 times a second.
And it listens for these echoes returning, and as the echo, the soonest echo that comes back to the radar
represents the clouds that are highest in the atmosphere, and the echoes that come furthest
away represent the clouds that are lowest in the atmosphere. And the amount of,
the loudness of the shout represents the amount of water that's in these clouds.
So it's, it's measuring the echoes and the time of travel the echoes that allows us to
give us this unique view of the vertical profile of clouds.