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Disaster Warning

Armenian weather predictions get help from the Cloud

“Strong winds, storms, heavy rain, heatwaves, and severe frosts all cause hundreds of millions of dollars of damage in the region. Also we had loss of lives and injuries so it is a very important issue.” Dr. Artur Gevorgyan, Hydromet Service of Armenia

Monitoring dust storms to give asthma sufferers a breather

Frequent in arid regions, dust storms can have devastating effects. Powered by R&E connectivity, monitoring and simulations equip scientists to better predict them and assist authorities in issuing alerts to help people, particularly asthma sufferers, take protective action.

System collects data to minimize climate change impact on the Amazon

The Amazon region is one of the ecosystems on the planet most affected by global climate change. The reason is variations in the Ecuador line cause events like floods, droughts and storms that directly affect the environment and the local population.

Monitoring volcanoes by satellites

For volcanologists and seismologists Iceland is the world’s volcanic laboratory, where they try out new, data-intensive monitoring and early warning technologies, to help save lives and livelihoods in all parts of the world threatened by volcanic eruptions.

Revealing the inner workings of a tornado

Leigh Orf from the University of Wisconsin-Madison leads a group of researchers specialised in re-creating meteorological events leading up to the forming of tornadoes. Built on real-world observational data, the computer simulations unveil the inner workings of these monstrous events in unprecedented detail.

Hook up to NOAH to know your hazards

While you can’t do anything to change the course of a typhoon moving towards you, you can take the necessary precautions before it reaches your shores - the earlier the better. So, you need to know your hazards, and that is why, in the wake of the catastrophic tropical storm Sendong in 2011, the Philippines started developing a complex early warning system.

Weather forecasting to keep the population safe

As weather forecasts are becoming increasingly detailed, data volumes are increasing as well, demanding high-speed connectivity and supercomputing power.

Grid computing helps India manage floods, monsoons and climate change

The Indian summer monsoon is a manifestation of complex interactions between land, ocean and atmosphere and the simulation of its mean pattern and its variability on inter-annual scales is one of the challenging problems in climate studies. The correct prediction of this complex phenomenon is vital to national planning and economic policy making.

Tracking Kyrgyzstan’s melting glaciers

Understanding how the environment is altering through ongoing monitoring is key to coping with the effects of climate change. Working with European partners, the Central Asian Institute of Applied Geosciences (CAIAG) in Kyrgyzstan is able to monitor melting glaciers and mitigate the risks to the local population.

Helping to win the race against severe weather

With extreme weather events increasingly hitting news headlines around the world, accurate and timely forecasts are essential for effective disaster warning and mitigation systems. This, in turn, calls for joint research efforts within the global meteorological community to improve models and tools for predicting severe weather, such as hurricanes, tornadoes, cyclones, floods, heat waves etc.

Monitoring and forecasting extreme environmental events to save lives

When the Latin American Observatory of Extraordinary Events announced in October 2011 that rainfall was expected to be above average for the South American Northwest and above average for the Southeast of the same region, an early alert for floods was issued for Panama, Colombia and Venezuela, and one of a drought for North-western Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay. This is an example of how the information gathered and disseminated by the Observatory, a collaboration involving a number of institutions, helps Latin American nations with risk management for extreme environmental events.