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From above, you can see that South Korea’s Pyeongchang region

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is nestled in a complex and rugged mountain range.

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Up close, professional athletes and spectators

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are dotted in the mountain’s crevasses for the 2018 Winter Olympics.

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The area has vast vertical drops

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and an average high of around 40 degrees Fahrenheit in February

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making it an ideal location for the games.

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As it turns out, the mountain range is also an ideal place

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for NASA scientists and engineers to study snow.

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So we’re here on the roof at the radar.

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All the games will be happening about 5 kilometers away from where the radar site is.

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This is Manuel Vega, an engineer that’s part of a NASA team at the Winter Olympics

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studying how well they can measure snow from the ground and space to better predict snowstorms.

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NASA is one of 20 agencies from 11 countries

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working together in a project called ICE-POP,

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the International Collaborative Experiments for Pyeongchang

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2018 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games.

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Around 70 instruments have been deployed for ICE-POP

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across Pyeongchang’s diverse landscape to monitor the characteristics of snow.

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Factors such as temperature, altitude, and winds affect

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what types of snow forms and how much water is stored in snow.

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More than one-sixth of the world’s population relies on seasonal snow for water,

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yet it remains as one of the biggest gaps of knowledge in the water cycle.

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To understand snow’s role in the water cycle,

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it helps to monitor snowfall patterns around the world.

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With NASA’s Global Precipitation Measurement Mission, or GPM,

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scientists can see global maps of rain and snow every 30 minutes.

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But complex terrains with mountains and fast-changing clouds

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can be difficult to decipher from space.

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ICE-POP gives scientists an opportunity to use the ground instruments

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to check that what GPM is seeing from space is close to what they’re seeing on the ground.

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Scientists call this ground validation, which is key to understanding snow on a global scale.

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Another aspect of understanding snow is predicting when snowstorms occur.

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NASA is providing ICE-POP with one of five real-time research forecast models

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to experiment with predictions in a real-world setting.

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NASA’s model provides forecasts over 16 different Olympic venues

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every six hours to Olympic officials.

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And with ground instruments scattered across the region,

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they can test how accurate the forecasts are.

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The most satisfying thing is contributing to scientific knowledge.

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In short, the science community hopes for what

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a lot of Olympic athletes want in Pyeongchang:

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precipitation and perfection.

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