Earth

Since in 1968, the crew of Apollo 8 amazed us with a vision of our planet dawning on the lunar horizon, the representations of our globe do not stop improving in quality, impact and spectacularity.

However, in the immeasurable Internet of the middle of the second decade of the 21st century, it is not easy to find pearls like the one that today I have the pleasure of sharing with the readers of XatakaWindows: Earth.

The Earth is very much alive

The first visual impact offered by the globe that we see when entering this website for the first time is the moving vision (to scale) of the circulation of the wind atmospheric at ground level.

It's mesmerizing to experience what a North Atlantic depression really means, how high-speed winds swirl around, and affect hundreds of miles away.

We also have several degrees of zoom, and we can even select a given point in particular and find out the estimated speed of the airflow in that geographical situation .

The experience gains degrees of depth and complexity when we click on the word Earth , and we access a menu of layer options to be displayed.

So, in the first few lines I can see the date and time of the observation, the data set being used in the plot, the color scale, and the data source.

In the second block, I can change the sense of time, situate myself in my geographical position or observe a grid that covers the entire surface.

From here I can define if I want to see the atmospheric or nautical circulation. The latter shows me all the main currents of the globe.

I can also select the height at which I want to observe the winds, which will give many readers more than one and two surprises (I recommend seeing the planetary rings of jet streams at 10HP Tall).

The Overlay allows us to indicate the type of data on which I want to visualize the atmospheric circulation. This way I can observe the temperature, the precipitable water, the water in clouds and the pressure at sea level (may the professionals forgive me for my crude translations).

Lastly, and remembering those years as a student, I have 8 different projections of the globe, in which to visualize the simulation.

When science is beautiful

Cameron Beccario, the author of this scientific work of art, has discovered nothing new. But, like those Apollo 8 astronauts, has made me see the earth from a unique point of view, and especially beautiful.

Built using standard languages ​​and tools widely used by the Web development industry, this simulator draws on open government data sources and is a spectacular sample of what can be built in this oversaturated Information Society.

I hope you enjoy it.

More information | Earth