Thursday, September 17, 2020

This is the Earth Now



Now is a very worrying time to be looking down on the Earth from above. In the Western United States huge clouds of smoke can be seen billowing across Oregon, Idaho and California While in the Gulf of Mexico a huge hurricane can be observed approaching Georgia and South Carolina.

Thanks to NASA you don't actually need to be aboard the International Space Station to view the Earth from space. Instead you can use Earth Now to view recent climate data on top of of an interactive 3D map of the Earth. This 3D globe includes the latest satellite imagery of significant climate events happening right now. So (at the time of writing) Earth Now includes imagery of wildfires in the western United States and Hurricane Paulette and Hurricane Sally.

As well as showing recent satellite imagery of climatic events Earth Now also allows you to view global climate data which has been gathered by NASA satellites. This data includes the latest surface air temperatures, carbon dioxide levels and carbon monoxide levels. The Earth Now globe also includes the real-time position of the satellites which have been used to gather all this climate data.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

If it's near real-time, then it's weather data, not climate data.

Keir Clarke said...

I just used the terms used by NASA. I think the rule is that you have to be at least a brain surgeon before you can argue with a rocket scientist.

John B said...

Rather nice, but I wish they didn't reset to the view over the US each time you changed dataset, and having the satellites rushing around is silly for "now"