Web Service for Weather Prediction
Web Services, Linux and grid computing are among the technologies researchers are using to develop a system of predicting and improving warning times for weather emergencies such as tornadoes and flash floods.
The Engineering Research Center for Collaborative Adaptive Sensing of the Atmosphere (CASA) says it hopes to overcome a shortcoming of existing weather forecasting and warning systems, which have difficulty monitoring conditions close to the ground because of the curvature of the Earth.
CASA plans to get around the curvature issue and obstructions such as mountains by setting up dense networks of short-range radars that are physically smaller than most existing meteorological radars, says UMass, which is a leader in the CASA project. The radars can be mounted on top of buildings or cell phone towers and supported by PC-sized computers - as opposed to today's high-power radars that often have 30-foot antennas and supercomputer accompaniments.
http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2003/1006radar.html
~Vishal