CWxMAP—Customer-Driven Interactive METOC Charts via The WWW

Since the advent of the World Wide Web (WWW), there has been an ever increasing demand for quick access to prepared information in all areas within the civilian and military sectors. The Fleet Numerical Meteorology and Oceanography (METOC) Center in Monterey, California, has been successful in exploiting the WWW to effect the timely delivery of current and forecasted weather and ocean information to its customers around the globe. This paper reports on the design and successful deployment of a system that delivers charts for user selected regions of interest, produced with Beowulf-class computing technology, resulting in supercomputer performance at an order of magnitude lower cost.