Google is helping the U.S. government accomplish research on climate change by donating 50 million hours of cloud computing time as well as other resources.
Google is donating 50 million hours of cloud computing time to the U.S. government to assist in a recently announced Climate Data Initiative that aims to help organizations and communities use public data to look at climate conditions in their areas.
"Up until now, it's been difficult for the public to locate detailed, timely data relevant to climate-related risks such as extreme weather events," Tyler Erickson, developer advocate for the Google Earth Engine, wrote in a March 19 post on the Google Lat Long Blog. "To help address this challenge, Google is donating cloud computing storage and access to other tools to support institutions that are driving climate change resilience."
The efforts are being made as part of the Climate Data Initiative announced by the White House earlier this month, wrote Erickson.
To help in those efforts, Google is providing 50 million hours of high-performance computing on the Google Earth Engine geospatial analysis platform, according to Erickson. "Earth Engine brings together the world's satellite imagery with tools to help detect changes and map trends on the Earth's surface. Earth Engine has already been applied to unlock valuable information from the 40+ year treasure trove of Landsat satellite data [USGS/NASA], including an interactive time lapse of the planet from 1984-2012, the first high-resolution global maps of deforestation, and a near-real-time deforestation alert system that allows anyone interested in forest monitoring to take part. We hope that with this new donation, researchers will focus on applying Earth Engine to address climate-related risks such as managing agricultural water supplies and modeling the impacts of sea-level rise and storm surge." for complete story see here
