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Google weather god takes control
The Nasa African Monsoon Multidisciplinary Analyses (Namm) mission is an exciting piece of research.
‘Scientists are using airplanes, sensors, radar, computer modeling programs and Nasa satellites to better understand hurricanes,’ its web page tells us.
‘Some of the Nasa satellites include Aqua, the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM), and the recently-launched Cloudsat/Calipso satellite.’ It is returning some impressive pictures of hurricanes forming in West Africa. But as Oluwole Kolawole at K4Plus Systems points out, having seen a feature on the project on BBC News 24: ‘I noticed that one of the computers on their aircraft was running Google Earth to map the storm formation. You would have thought that Nasa would use its own World Wind program.’
Visit http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hurricanes/archives/2006/hurricane_mission.html, and the pictures are even credited to Google. It may be that Google bought Nasa when we were off for Christmas: we’ll check.
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