Complex information system for organization of the input data of models of convective clouds

This paper is concerned with the technology of meteorological data consolidation. The technology is used to create one of the components of the virtual environment for forecasting dangerous convective phenomena — thunderstorms, squalls, hail and heavy rainfall. Nowadays, progress in the field of such phenomena simulation is significantly associated with the verification of the already existing models rather than with the development of the new ones. Verification and adjustment of the models are very difficult due to the lack of freely available integrated data on the location and time of the observed phenomena in conjunction with meteorological data used as initial and boundary conditions for numerical models of convective clouds. In the paper we apply consolidation technology to develop the system for heterogeneous data extraction, transformation and loading to the relational database that contains the whole set of meteorological information about the state of the atmosphere at the place and at the time when a dangerous convective phenomenon is recorded. Data sources which are freely available via the Internet are used. The format of the information stored in the database does not require further decoding and can be directly used for the numerical simulation. Refs 22. Figs 5.