Is anyone using the KML format to distribute 3D information about the Earth's atmosphere? The atmosphere and the severe weather within it are inherently three dimensional. However, from a quick search, I find only 2D images of atmospheric data in the KML and KMZ formats, not 3D representations. If you can use KML to define a 3D building, why not use it to define a 3D storm cloud?

I have tried creating 3D KMZ files from a satellite overflight of Hurricane Katrina (2005), a squall line over Florida, and several other severe weather events. If anyone else has already put this kind of 3D data into the KMZ format, please let me know. I will try to attach a sample KMZ file to this message, but if this fails, you can download several 3D KMZ files from the following URL: http://www-tsdis.gsfc.nasa.gov/tsdis/gis/google.html . These KMZ files contain 3D precipitation, cloud height, lightning, and surface rain rates observed by the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite.

I would appreciate receiving any feedback that you may have on these KMZ files. In particular, is the almost 1 megabyte file size too big? Do the 100,000 lat/lon/altitude vertices in the file cause Google Earth to run too slowly on your computer? Does the web page listed above give a sufficiently detailed description of the KMZ file's contents? The web page describes the somewhat abstract representation in the KMZ file, such as using a yellow vertical line to represent a lightning flash.

Owen