Patent ID: 7472021

Claim:
A method of detecting an atmospheric feature, the method comprising: determining a value of a meteorological scalar field at an initial time for a plurality of tracers each at a first tracer location; selecting at least one of an integration time and a spatial resolution of a wind field, the integration time being selected according to a coherence time of a type of the atmospheric feature to be detected, the spatial resolution of the wind field being selected according to a spatial scale of the type of the atmospheric feature to be detected; advecting each of the tracers to a second tracer location at a specified time according to the integration time and the wind field; determining for each tracer a value of the meteorological scalar field at the specified time and the second tracer location; and summing the values of the meteorological scalar field at the first and second tracer locations for each tracer to generate an integrated value of the meteorological scalar field.