Scott Nicholas
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has awarded Earth Networks a five-year, $2.5 million contract to provide the National Weather Service access to a lightning data.
NWS will use the company’s Total Lightning Network in efforts to identify weather conditions, increase weather warning lead times and help forecasters gain situational awareness, Earth Networks said Thursday.
The network is designed to monitor in-cloud lightning activity and collect information from nearly 1,500 sensors installed in more than 90 countries.
Earth Networks developed the network to help forecasters predict lightning strikes and issue alerts for severe weather forms such as tornadoes and hail.
“As a corporate partner, we are thrilled to continue participating, supporting and advancing these efforts toward establishment of a truly weather ready nation,” said Bill Callahan, vice president of federal programs at Earth Networks.
Earth Networks also introduced the Sferic Maps and Sferic Mobile weather visualization, decision support and collaboration systems designed to automate the decisionmaking process related to severe weather situations.
The company added it will expand the Earth Networks Global Lightning Network in a push to offer long-range global lightning detection capacity for businesses and government customers as well as help them address financial, operational and human risk challenges.
