Thursday, May 29, 2008

Climate Change Visualizations in Google Earth

If you don't have Google Earth installed on your computer you should! Not only will you spend hours finding your home and other places you've been, but you will open a world of technological tools that helps visualize all kinds of things. Everything from the journeys of Odysseus to oil consumption graphs of every country super-imposed on the globe.

If you need to install it, click here.

Once you are a Google Earth user, keep up with new features and layers at this Google Earth blog. It's awesome.

In fact, from them, the Green Panthers would like to share with you a couple great visualizations of Climate Change using Google Earth. Here's their original post.

Download and run the two Google Earth files - one from the UK's Met Office and the other from the British Antartic Survey. You'll be impressed. Open the menus and you get specific stories about parts of the world and what they are going through as a result of climate change.

An example:

Over the next few decades cereal production in China is expected to hold up well, with a longer growing season in northern areas and the fertilising effect of elevated levels of CO2.But without improvements in agricultural technology, cereal production is predicted to decline over the second half of this century.

Here's just a screenshot of our side of the world and temperature change.