Across the world everyone is watching the weather. Some places it might be raining cats and dogs while other places are in a drought. Often times you will hear that it is the coldest winter on record or the warmest summer on record. The weather is often the topic that everyone talking about.
Meteorologists Are Turning To Big Data
When trying to predict storms, hurricanes and floods the meteorologists are now turning to big data to help predict more accurately and pinpoint the major climate events. Meteorologists are trying to be able to predict these disasters and help to save more the $200 billion in losses that occur each year. Although there are many natural disasters such as earthquakes and tsunamis that are hard to predict and foresee maybe with the help of big data the forecasters can help to see these events coming. An example of these predictions is Super storm Sandy. This storm could have been a lot worse but the fact that the forecasters were able to forecast the storm coming gave the people of the area plenty of time to secure their belongings and evacuate. Before some of the big data systems that we have now the hurricane could have been predicted only when it was 345 miles away from landfall.
In order to be able to make these predictions the weather and data companies are working to constantly process the current climate information. The Climate Corporation uses a real time computer system that simulates data points. These data points monitor the conditions on a global scale and they do it every day. However this is not the only computer system used to predict the weather. There are many different systems and over 2.2 million weather data points all around the world.
How Researchers Use Big Data Technology
When researchers are trying to model, interpret and illustrate the climate changes that are due to the environmental changes they rely on big data technology. An example of the reason why people are so involved with these predictions are because the current global sea levels are getting higher everyday. Today they are currently about eight inches higher than they were in 1880 and the bad new is that researchers are expecting them to rise another two to seven feet during this century. This will have a huge effect on the people who are currently living only four feet above the high tide level. However you see it you will realize that climate change is an ever growing problem.
Surging Seas
One of the popular big data tools that are being used is an interactive map called surging seas. This is by a nonprofit Climate Central that shows the sea level rise and storm surge in a graphic detail to all of the coastal towns, cities, counties and states throughout the United States. The total number of these towns is over three thousand.
Types Of Big Data Being Used
There are two types of big data that are currently being used in today’s world that helps people to understand and deal with the climate change. The first takes the collected data that is recently been collected that is complex and manipulates it to be easily effective. The second type of big data is that of older data-sets. These older data-sets may not be as reliable as they could be. The issues are being addressed and that helps the data currently being collected to be more powerful.
The idea of being able to predict what the climate change is going to do is a tough job. The good news is that big data is making this job easier. Big data gives the researchers and meteorologists the information it needs to help keep people safe and warn them of when a storm such as Super Storm Sandy is going to happen.