Session Recording Here
NOAA has partnered with the Western Regional Climate Center (WRCC), the Desert Research Institute (DRI) and UC Merced to develop Climate Engine, a cloud computing web application in which programmers and non-programmers alike can quickly and easily process and visualize satellite and climate data in an interactive User Interface (UI) and Application Programming Interface (API). Data storage, access, and on-demand processing and storage is accomplished using the Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and the massively parallel cloud computing platform Google Earth Engine. Common climatic operations, along with multiple modern drought indices, have been coded into Google Earth Engine and made available in the Climate Engine UI and API. Users can adjust several settings within these drought algorithms, facilitating unprecedented near-instantaneous intercomparison between types of parameter fittings, evapotranspiration estimate types, temperature and precipitation datasets and periods of record.
Drought.gov is standing up an operational instance of Climate Engine within the NOAA-Google Cloud Contract, and obtaining licensing for Google Earth Engine. This new technology will allow Drought.gov to produce new high resolution daily gridded products not currently feasible with on-premises infrastructure. Climate Engine will pair these processing capabilities with the NOAA Open Data Dissemination (NODD) program to facilitate free and open access to foundational NOAA datasets and the dissemination of derived products.
