SOS Mission and Vision

Mission: To help understand the world around us, NOAA’s Science on a Sphere® Program develops data visualization technologies from mobile apps to large exhibits that feature interdisciplinary Earth and space data, along with supporting educational resources.

Vision: Our innovative data visualization and educational tools give everyone the power to understand our interconnected world and inspire meaningful change.

The Science On a Sphere (SOS) team helps people understand the world around us through many avenues. At the heart of our program are the Science On a Sphere and SOS Explorer technologies with their accompanying data catalogs. Our team of developers have been working on the software for two decades. In this time, we have implemented many new features, improvements, and enhancements, while also updating and testing new hardware for use with the system.

The software comes to life when paired with our SOS Data Catalog. The catalog contains more than 600 dataset visualizations that include nearly 100 narrated movies and 50 real-time datasets. As part of NOAA, most of our catalog is related to Earth science topics, such as climate models, sea surface temperatures, weather, atmospheric chemistry, and tsunamis. But we have also branched out to include many datasets in the fields of astronomy, history, social science, public health, and more. The visualizations in our catalog are engaging, informative, and awe inspiring.

You can find Science On a Sphere and SOS Explorer in science museums, aquariums, zoos, schools and universities, visitor centers, government laboratories, and many more locations around the world. Millions of people see them every year. To serve our sites, we have created the SOS Users Collaborative Network, which is a place to share ideas, best practices, and content. Our SOS team acts as a bridge, bringing relevant, timely, and accurate visualizations and information from subject matter experts into the public forum.

Our education team works to make sure that our software and data catalog are used to their full potential by providing a variety of resources. We train users and give technical demonstrations to make sure people know how to use our products. We create educational materials and share data visualizations on social media to engage learners everywhere. We support educators by hosting education forums, partnering on education research projects, and working with classroom teachers. We collaborate with artists, scientists, video producers, evaluators, curriculum developers, and formal and informal educators to create and share resources that bring science to life.

As we look to the future, we want people to not only understand the world around them, but also to think critically about the connections that exist between people and our planet. We want to inspire learning and meaningful change that make our planet a better place for everyone. We want to use technology in innovative ways and create visualizations that inspire awe and understanding. We want our tools and resources to be accessible for everyone, and we want you to be a part of what we do!