摘要
Recent research has shown an increase in the number of extreme tornado outbreaks per year.The characterization of the spatio-temporal pattern of tornado events is therefore a critical task in the analysis of meteorological data.Currently,there are a large number of available meteorological datasets that can be used for such analysis.However,much of these data are distributed across multiple websites and are not accessible in a central location.This poses a significant challenge for a scientist who is interested in exploring meteorological patterns associated with tornado events.This paper presents a novel system which uses cloud-based technology for integrating,storing,exploring,analyzing,and visualizing meteorological data associated with tornado outbreaks.The system employs a novel NoSQL database schema and web services architecture for data integration and provides a user friendly interface that allows scientists to explore the spatio-temporal pattern of tornado events.Furthermore,scientists can use this interface to analyze the relationship between different meteorological variables and properties of tornado outbreaks using a number of spatio-temporal statistical and data mining methods.The efficacy of the system is demonstrated on a use case centered on the analysis of climatic indicators of large spatio-temporally clustered tornado outbreaks.
