Cisco lands deal to build climate-change network for Nasa

'Planetary Skin' to gather data on global warming

The Cisco partnership with Nasa will track climate change and deforestation

Cisco Systems has inked a deal with Nasa to build a new global system designed to track climate change.

The 'Planetary Skin' network will connect a number of sensor and recording units across the globe in an effort to gather data to monitor and track changes to the climate.

Cisco plans to begin building the system next year under a programme known as 'Rainforest Skin', which will track climate change and deforestation in rainforest environments. Eventually the company plans to take the system global, and create a network of data-collecting systems.

"Mitigating the impacts of climate change is critical to the world's economic and social stability," said Cisco chief executive John Chambers.

"This unique partnership taps the power and innovation of the market and harnesses it for the public good. Cisco is proud to work with Nasa on this initiative, and hopes that others from the public, private and not-for-profit sectors will join us in this exciting endeavour."

Nasa has long been a major partner and customer for the IT industry. The agency's research labs house some of the top supercomputing clusters in the world, and more recently the Ames Research Center leased land and office space to neighbour Google.