Show HN: Globe Viz: Global sea surface temps over time

3 weeks ago 1

About This App

The oceans are the reservoirs of the world's heat. Much of the excess heat entering the earth since the dawn of the industrial age has gone into the oceans; they are now reaching the limits of their ability to absorb heat and CO₂ without triggering climate "tipping points." Increased ocean temperatures affect coral reefs, change how ocean currents flow, and provide more energy for hurricanes and typhoons. Monitoring ocean temperatures is an important part of climate science; this application lets everyone peer into that data and see what's happening across the globe and across time.

This application visualizes daily global sea surface temperature data from NASA's OISST (Optimally Interpolated Sea Surface Temperature) dataset. You can view absolute temperatures or temperature anomalies (deviations from the long-term average for that date and location) to see how ocean temperatures are changing over time.

You can see the current state of warming of the global sea surface temperatures, and focus on any region of interest. Use the mouse and wheel or touchpad to zoom and pan. You should be able to see El Niño and La Niña phases forming and dissipating over time in the tropical Pacific, as well as the impact of hurricanes and typhoons and other phenomena.

Note that in the anomaly dataset, the warm side of the color map goes more than twice as far from 0°C as the cold side. Due to global warming, the warmest sea surface temp anomalies are now well over double the coldest ones.

Features:

Interactive 3D globe showing global ocean temperatures
Shows absolute temperature and temp anomalies
View historical data by date
Animate through time to see temperature trends
Auto-rotate and zoom via interactive camera controls
Horizontal mouse wheel to rotate the globe left/right
Keyboard Shortcuts:
- Spacebar - Play/Pause animation
- Left/Right Arrows - Navigate backward/forward one day
- R - Toggle auto-rotation on/off
- T - Switch between Temperature and Temp Anomaly datasets
- ? - Show this About dialog

Data Source: NASA OISST daily 0.25° resolution data, processed by my sea-surface-temp-viz project and hosted on AWS S3. The color maps show temperature ranges from cold (blue/purple) to warm (orange/red and beyond).

This is an open-source project under the MIT license.
Data generator: View source code on GitHub
This 3D Globe viewer: View source code on GitHub

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