Google and Microsoft help the White House track climate change

The White House has summoned both Google and Microsoft to aid in the government’s quest to learn more about climate change. A team of researchers from both companies is helping to gather information for the government’s new climate change portal as part of Data.gov as part of President Obama’s massive Climate Data Initiative.  

Data.gov is getting a whole lot greener thanks to its new section dedicated to climate information. The new channel is the product of President Obama’s Climate Data Initiative (PDF), and pulls information that can help predict the effects of climate change and prevent any damage that may result. The raw data comes from the likes of the Department of Defense, NASA and the US Geological Society, but probably isn’t easy to grok for the average person. To help with that, Google and Microsoft have stepped in. Mountain View is donating 50 million hours of its Earth Engine’s computing power — the Global Forest Watch’s backbone — and is partnering with academics in the western US to produce a near real-time drought map and monitoring system.