AWeather—An extensible application for visualizing real-time weather data

Virtual Globe technologies provide an opportunity to disseminate high-quality geospatial data in an easy to understand format. AWeather is a free/open source application which has been designed to integrate and visualize high-quality meteorological data using an interactive Virtual Globe interface suitable for a wide range of users including weather enthusiasts, academics, and professionals.

This was accomplished using Free Software tools and libraries based around the GObject/GTK+ stack while using OpenGL for hardware accelerated rendering. AWeather itself consists of two distinct parts: the AWeather program itself, and an underlying Virtual Globe library which was created to provide the rendering and GIS capabilities used by AWeather without being tied to any specific application or user interface.

While originally intended as a NEXRAD Level-II data viewer, AWeather has grown to become a more complete GIS platform with support for Conus radar mosaics, terrain rendering, point data, and image overlays including surface imagery and geopolitical maps provided by OGC Web Map Services. To facilitate further development, a plugin system has been implemented which provides the capability to extend AWeather's functionality with additional data sources and rendering capabilities.