NASA's Got a New Web Site

NASA's JPL has a new web site which focuses on surface conditions on one specific planet: The Earth.

It has a Sea Level Viewer which is basically a very fancy menu for a number of multi-media presentations, and a list of current or proposed missions. I am not overly impressed with this, but it may be a good resource for the kiddies.

Much more interesting, and in fact, quite impressive, is the "Climate Time Machine" ...

This shows ice melting, sea level change, CO2 emissions, and average global temperature. The CO2 emissions is fascinating, because CO2 emissions are an assay of development . Go to the site. Do the CO2 time machine. Keep a close eye on Russia and China.

The Average Global Temperature animation will knock your socks off. And keep them off. Too hot to wear socks in 2007.

The Global Change Theater is a collection of "mov" format films. I had a little trouble getting them to load quickly enough. Maybe this is because a zillion people were checking out the site the same time I was (shortly after getting the press release about it). Since the menu for this feature is a set of links to some of the files, you can download them to your desktop and watch them without interruption or off line. Teachers will want to use these in class.

Other links are to webcasts. When I clicked on the web cast, not always did good things happen ... but most of them worked. These are not produced movies but rather press conferences or lectures. Not slick, but informative.

The site has many pages on climate related topics, summaries of the IPCC reports, links to US government policy related web sites, and so on. Mainly, this site seems to be a good teaching resource for climate change. It will take some time to see if it passes muster with a wide range of climate experts, and if it is sufficiently science based and stays away from the politics.