Earth Science Week 2015
Today marks the start of Earth Science Week, a national and international week organized by the American Geosciences Institute as a way to raise awareness of the work done by Earth Sciences and to encourage better “stewardship of the Earth”.
The theme for this year’s Earth Science Week is “Visualizing Earth Systems”. Geoscientists have some of the most advanced visualization systems anywhere: energy companies reconstruct the shape of subsurface rock units in 3-D projection rooms, high-powered computing systems model how water vapor moves in the atmosphere to predict weather, and simulations can demonstrate how particles stuck together to form the first solid objects when our solar system formed.
This is a particularly interesting data visualization from NASA. This video shows a combination of the circulation patterns in the ocean and winds in the atmosphere based on those computer models, literally a computer simulation of fluid flow across the planet. The projection is in a particularly interesting orientation as well as this video was originally produced for projection on a domed screen in a planetarium; what better way to visualize Earth systems than a video like this?
Each day in Earth Science Week has a specific focus; check out the link below for more on Earth Science Week and the daily focus topics.
-JBB
Video Credit: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/details.cgi?aid=3879
Earth Science Week: http://www.earthsciweek.org/about-esw