GIOVANNI FAQ

Most remote-sensing instruments observe the Earth by scanning across the orbit track, which can be visualized as the line on the Earth surface directly below the orbital path traveled by the satellite. The scan area on either side of this line is called the scan swath. Most remote-sensing instruments do not have a scan swath wide enough so that the observational coverage on successive orbits overlaps. So for each day of observations, there are gaps between the scan swaths. However, the "polar orbit" configuration of many remote-sensing satellites can cause the scan swaths to overlap at higher latitudes, i.e., the polar regions, even though the scan swaths do not overlap over most of the Earth surface.

Giovanni output images from the "original" Giovanni system (now called Giovanni-2, or G2) are only in the GIF image format, and could not be put into Google Earth easily, if at all. Now, however, Giovanni-3 output images of area plots are available as KMZ files, which can be downloaded directly and opened in Google Earth. More capabilities of this download option were being developed at the time that this answer was written (December 2007).

How do I acknowledge the use of Giovanni in a research paper? If I use Giovanni should I have someone on the GES DISC staff as a co-author?

We have created a Web page which provides a basic acknowledgment statement, a general Giovanni reference, and considerations for co-authorship. Please consult this page for guidance. Note that the use of Giovanni should be acknowledged in any type of scientific media, particularly reports, posters, and meeting presentations, in addition to peer-reviewed papers published in scientific journals.

Recommended guidelines for use of Giovanni data in publications

How do I subscribe to the Giovanni-News mailing list?

It's easy! Here are the instructions:

1.  The email address is "majordomo@listserv.gsfc.nasa.gov"
2.  Put anything you want (or nothing) in the "Subject:" line
3.  The body of the message should just say "Subscribe giovanni-news" .
4.  Nothing else is required; send the message. You will receive an automatically-generated message confirming your subscription.

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