I-earth..

Called iEarth, the NASA software scours EOS databanks for information and converts it into a file that can be viewed via Google Earth.

Choosing a spot on the planet's surface will prompt iEarth to display ground-based measurements for that location, as well as data relating to the atmosphere and space above it, said Brian Wilson on NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

"This is the first time we've been able to do multi-instrument atmospheric science. You can pick a specific spot on the planet and, starting with the surface, move up in altitude through the troposphere and stratosphere," he said.

Wilson demonstrated a prototype of iEarth at this week's meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.

According to New Scientist, NASA will make the iEarth system available for use in April.

He said NASA developed this system on facing the problem of being overwhelmed with huge amount of data on atmosphere.

To help understand climate change, NASA created its Earth Observing System (EOS), made up of a dozen satellites plus a host of weather balloons and ground-based sensors that collect data such as air temperatures, water-vapour densities and aerosol concentrations.

Terabytes of such measurements have been streaming in each day, and the agency was quickly swamped with so much data that all it could do was dump it on disc drives.