MongoDB to Power UK Met Office Space Weather Predictions

United Kingdom – July 15, 2013 — 10gen's leading NoSQL database, MongoDB, is helping the Met Office, the United Kingdom’s National Weather Service, develop a space weather forecasting service.

Space weather events such as Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs), solar flares and the solar wind can impact the performance of the electricity grid, satellites, GPS systems, aviation and mobile communications. As such space weather forecasts are of crucial importance, not just to the public but also to Armed Forces, satellite operators and the electricity and aviation industries.

The scalable and non-relational nature of MongoDB will enable the Met Office to analyse vast amounts of different types of data including solar flare imagery from NASA. In turn, the Met Office will provide warnings of space weather events so that the government and businesses can take appropriate action to minimise its impacts.

Following the beginning of UK and US government space weather collaboration in 2011 the Met Office is working with partners including NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the UK Space Agency and the British Geological Survey to accelerate the development of improved space weather models and prediction systems.

Following the completion of the initial phase in July 2013, the Met Office aims to deliver public space weather forecasts, providing stakeholders and interested parties with access to real-time space weather information and predictions.

“Since the start of this project, the Met Office was challenged with bringing together large volumes of data from all the various monitoring assets used for space weather monitoring and forecasting - which is no small task. We needed a platform to aggregate data in a speedy, scalable and flexible manner. We considered a number of non-relational and traditional relational databases, and MongoDB ticked all the boxes,” explained James Tomkins, Met Office Portfolio Technical Lead.

“The Met Office performs a vital service that we all depend on. This is a great example of how NoSQL databases are playing a vital role in turning vast amounts of data into useful intelligence that helps the government and a number of industries that need to make decisions based on space weather predictions,” said Joe Morrissey, VP of EMEA at 10gen, the MongoDB company.

As well as having access to NOAA's state of the art 'ENLIL' computer model that is used to predict the arrival time of Coronal Mass Ejections, the Met Office will be using MongoDB as the database to further develop its own space weather prediction models. This will help all stakeholders better understand and respond to space weather threats.

About Met Office The Met Office is the UK's National Weather Service. It has a long history of weather forecasting and has been working in the area of climate change for more than two decades. It is a Trading Fund within the Department for Business Innovation and Skills, operating on a commercial basis under set targets. As a world leader in providing weather and climate services, the Met Office employs more than 1,800 people at 60 locations throughout the world. It is recognised as one of the world's most accurate forecasters, using more than 10 million weather observations a day, an advanced atmospheric model and a high performance supercomputer to create 3,000 tailored forecasts and briefings a day. These are delivered to a huge range of customers from the Government, to businesses, the general public, armed forces, and other organisations.

About 10gen 10gen is the company behind MongoDB, the leading NoSQL database. MongoDB (named from “huMONGOus,” meaning “extremely large”) is reinventing data management and powering big data. Designed for how we build and run applications today, MongoDB empowers organizations to be more agile and scalable. It enables new types of applications, better customer experience, faster time to market and lower costs. MongoDB has a thriving global community with 4 million downloads, 50,000 Online Education registrations, 15,000 MongoDB User Group (MUG) members and 10,000 annual MongoDB Days attendees. The company has more than 600 customers, including many of the world’s largest organizations. For more information, visit www.10gen.com.