Visualization Theater

The goal of the research presented here is to estimate and visualize the global impacts humans are having on the ocean's ecosystems. The cumulative impact map can be viewed in Google Earth or as an interactive feature by visiting the companion website.

What did your town look like on a global map 540 million years ago? How about 90 million years ago? Or during the Jurassic period? This fantastic interactive map by Ancient Earth allows you to enter an address and track the location of the geological change occurring since before the Pre-Cambrian period.

For perspective on climate and weather changes since the late 1800s, plot map and time series from climate reanalysis models; view daily station data from the Global Historical Climatology Network; visit the Climate Change Institute's Climate Reanalyzer for a daily-updated Global Weather overview; see animations of current global 7-day and U.S. Regional 48-hour weather forecasts. The Climate Change Institute is affiliated with the University of Maine System, Orono, Maine.

There are over 510 million square kilometers of area on the surface of Earth, but less than 30% of this is covered by land. The rest is water, in the form of ocean! This visualization uses data primarily from the United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD) to rank the world’s countries by their share of Earth’s surface. Learn more more in this great article by Visual Capitalist.

Information from the Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS) provides real-time data from offshore IOOS buoys, acting as an early warning system for shellfish hatcheries. They are our eyes on the ocean, coasts and Great Lakes. These data signal the approach of cold, acidified seawater one to two days before it arrives in sensitive coastal waters where larvae are cultivated. IOOS is an integrated network of people and technology gathering observing data and developing tracking and predictive tools to benefit the economy, the environment, and public safety at home, across the nation, and around the globe.

This tool from NASA's Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) provides the capability to interactively browse global, full-resolution satellite imagery and then download the underlying data, including data from the Global Precipitation Measurement Missions. Many of the 600+ available products are updated within three hours of observation, essentially showing the entire Earth as it looks "right now". This supports time-critical application areas such as wildfire management, air quality measurements, and flood monitoring. Arctic and Antarctic views of several products are also available for a "full globe" perspective. Browsing on tablet and smartphone devices is generally supported for mobile access to the imagery.

Use this web-mapping tool to visualize community-level impacts from coastal flooding or sea level rise (up to 10 feet above average high tides.) Learn about data and methods through documentation; share maps; view photo simulations of how future flooding might impact local landmarks; find data related to water depth, connectivity, flood frequency, socio-economic vulnerability, wetland loss and migration, and mapping confidence.

This web site contains a comprehensive review of the surface circulation of Earth’s ocean and classroom investigations appropriate for various disciplines at the high school level.

Access high-resolution ocean data sets from Saildrone Data Explorer, designed to make Saildrone data easy to find, download, and use for scientific and educational purposes. Saildrone’s global fleet of unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) has traveled more than 500,000 nautical miles in the Arctic, the Antarctic, across the Atlantic and the Pacific, and in the Caribbean, Mediterranean, and North Seas. Each vehicle is equipped with a suite of science-grade sensors to measure nearly two dozen variables above and below the sea surface every minute. The result is a series of large-scale data sets describing many parts of the world ocean that have never been observed in such detail.

(Google animates 315 years of ocean data)
The International Comprehensive Ocean-Atmosphere Data Set (ICOADS) is the most complete collection of surface marine data in existence, consisting of a digital database of 261 million weather observations made by ships, weather ships, and weather buoys spanning the years 1662 to 2007. These data have now been animated by Google Maps developers Paul Saxman and Brendan Kenny in a stunning visualization.

The United States Geological Survey (USGS) has a fantastic interactive map of American rivers. Click any river or stream and it will highlight the entire length of it, from the source to the mouth along with its tributaries. Follow the water.

Streamer is a great way to visualize and understand water flow across America. With Streamer, users can explore our Nation's major streams by tracing upstream to the source or downstream to where they empty. Streamer can also create reports about specific stream traces and the places they pass through.

This COSEE NOW community blog offers a compilation of some of the top sites on ocean, climate, and environmental data and science with excellent visual displays of data. This image represents the gradient of sea surface temperature (SST) at each point, and is based off of a 7-day composite of SST collected by the AVHRR instrument on NOAA’s polar orbiting satellites.

Public opinion about global warming is an important influence on policy and political decision making to reduce global warming and to prepare for climate impacts. The Yale Program on Climate Communication team of scientists has developed a geographic and statistical model to downscale national public opinion results to the state, congressional district, and county levels. These visualizations estimate public opinion across the country and offer a rich picture of the diversity of Americans’ beliefs, attitudes, and policy support. Maps are based on data through the year 2016.