(But don't ask about Africa, where there is minimal ground-based equipment, like navigation aids, weather reporting and radar, and where planes fly with more maintenance problems and are often overloaded).
In addition to their weather reporting function, these vessels aided in search and rescue operations, supported transatlantic flights, acted as research platforms for oceanographers, monitored marine pollution, and aided weather forecasting both by weather forecasters and within computerized atmospheric models.
Weather satellites transmit photographs of cloud patterns and measurements of other meteorological conditions that aid in weather forecasting, while communications satellites relay telephone calls, radio and television programs, and data communications between distant parts of the world.
A Department of Defense research activity supported by the Advanced Research Project Agency, Project BATON sought to expand understanding of storm physics as an aid to weather forecasting, fire prevention, and, possibly, for artificially controlling the weather.
Much of this research looks at grants, aid or weather events that affect mainly local areas and take place below the national radar.
Since 1997, Porsche, the German sports car manufacturer, has headed north to this tongue-twister of a Finnish town instead of east, a move that helps explain why it is still making money even as so many automakers are tapping government aid to weather the worst industry downturn in a generation.
Meteorologists use the location of some of the jet streams as an aid in weather forecasting and many other things.
With front-wheel drive -- an anomaly in this market -- the Seville inspires confidence on snow-covered roads, though that advantage is diminishing as rear-drive cars add sophisticated traction systems to aid foul-weather driving.
Still, such information may aid space-weather watchers, says Karel Schrijver, a solar physicist at the Lockheed Martin Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory in Palo Alto, California.
The White House's proposal includes major funding for NOAA's satellite program, which aids in weather predictions and atmospheric monitoring.
