Today has been designated as Earth Day 2014 and companies are using the occasion to showcase their efforts to help sustain the planet"s environment. That includes Microsoft, who today revealed a new project called FetchClimate that could help anyone learn about environmental conditions around the world.
The Microsoft Research blog has more information on FetchClimate, which is now available to access on any web browser. The blog states:
Just draw a box around the geographic area you’re interested in, select the environmental information you want, and view the data on Bing Maps within seconds. What used to take researchers hours, days, or even weeks can now be done very quickly—by anyone.
The site lets users learn about a region"s air temperature, precipitation rate, the amount of sun it gets and many more details. All the data for FetchClimate is stored on a Microsoft Azure server and users can view those statistics with time periods of hours, days and years.
Microsoft hints that they are planning to add some features to FetchClimate (what if you could upload a model, not just data?) in the coming months. The company is also offering a chance to win one of 40 grants of Azure resources that will let them set up their own FetchClimate-powered services. It states:
Using the deployment package, you will be able to implement your own instance of FetchClimate, including your datasets and a web front end that is customized for your own site—and we’ll provide the space on Azure!
Proposals for this program are being accepted from now until June 15th.
Source: Microsoft | Image via Microsoft