How Scott Collis Is Harnessing New Data To Improve Climate Models Each year Popular Science seeks out the brightest young scientists and engineers and names them the Brilliant Ten. Like the 110 honorees before them the members of this year's class are dramatically reshaping their fields--and the future. Some are tackling pragmatic questions like how to secure the Internet while others are attacking more abstract ones like determining the weather on distant exoplanets. The common thread between them is brilliance of course but also impact. If the Brilliant Ten are the faces of things to come the world will be a safer smarter and brighter place.--The EditorsArgonne National LaboratoryHarnessing new data to improve climate modelsClouds are one of the great challenges for climate scientists. They play a complex role in the atmosphere and in any potential climate-change scenario. But rudimentary data has simplified their role in simulations leading to variability among climate models. Scott Collis discovered a way to add accuracy to forecasts of future climate by tapping new sources of cloud data.Collis has extensive experience watching clouds first as a ski bum during grad school in Australia and then as a professional meteorologist. But when he took a job at the Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research he realized there was an immense source of cloud data that climate modelers weren't using: the information collected for weather forecasts. So Collis took on the gargantuan task of building open-access tools that convert the raw data from radar databases into formats that climate modelers can use. In one stroke Collis unlocked years of weather data. We were able to build such robust algorithms that they could work over thousands of radar volumes without human intervention says Collis.When the U.S. Department of Energy caught wind of his project it recruited him to work with a new radar network designed to collect high-quality cloud data from all over the globe. The network the largest of its kind isn't complete yet but already the data that Collis and his collaborators have collected is improving next-generation climate models.Click here to see more from our annual celebration of young researchers whose innovations will change the world. This article originally appeared in the October 2013 issue of Popular Science.Allison. if you think Mary`s posting is nice last week I bought a great new Audi Quattro from earning $6538 this - 4 weeks past and would you believe 10k this past-munth. it's by-far the best work I have ever had. I started this 8-months ago and straight away made myself more than $69 per-hr. More Help ..............jobs64.commy co-worker's mom makes $77 hourly on the laptop. She has been fired from work for 7 months but last month her pay check was $15344 just working on the laptop for a few hours. his explanation   www.jobs35.com