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Kerbal Weather Project
Caption: Daily cloud cover on Kerbin at 00 UT
Over a century ago, Vilhelm Kerman proposed that the weather could be forecasted numerically by solving a set of mathematical equations. Fifty years later, Jule Kerman worked with Jon Von Kerman, Klara Dan von Kerman, and many other pioneering women to make this proposal a reality. They used the most powerful computer at the time, KENIAC, to produce the first numerical weather simulation. Their success marked the dawn of modern weather and climate modeling.
Today, weather and climate analyses are produced by the Model for Prediction Across Scales (MPAS). MPAS is a state-of-the-art weather and climate model, developed by the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
At the Kerbal Space Center, weather analyses are provided by the Kerbal Weather Service (KWS), which is part of the Kerbal Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (KOAA).
Due to proposed budget cuts at KOAA, particularly in the climate modeling division, the computer power available to perform long-term simulations of Kerbin's atmosphere has been curtailed.
Fortunately, enough funds were secured to provide weather analyses at the Kerbal Space Center, Desert Launch Site, and Woomerang Launch Site. Climate analyses for all of Kerbin were also included in the budget. Due to computational limitations, climate analyses have a fairly coarse resolution around 2 x 2 decimal degrees, which works out to ~24 km on Kerbin.
To view weather and climate analyses for Kerbin select their respective menu options above.
Select the background (model setup) menu button to learn more about how MPAS was adapted to simulate the weather on Kerbin.
External Links: KSP Forum Page, GitHub, SpaceDock, API Documentation
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