Jointly with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Space Science and Engineering Center is conducting the WINter Cloud Experiment (WINCE) January 23 to February 13, 1997 from Truax Field in Madison. During WINCE, an instrumented NASA ER-2 high altitude research aircraft will be flown to learn more about detecting clouds from space in winter conditions. WINCE will provide important data with which scientists can improve cloud detection for future satellite instruments such as the MODerate resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS). This NASA research instrument, scheduled for launch in mid-1998 as part of Mission to Planet Earth, will assess earth climate trends of which clouds are such an important component.