NASA EO
illconsidered | October 15, 2012Here is a pretty awesome video from NASA showing a 3D earth view of global ocean currents as they were from June 2005 to December 2007. It is fascinating to watch the behavior of both large and small features and how they interact. Notable for neighbors of the Atlantic ocean is the Gulf Stream bringing warm water from the Gulf of Mexico area north and east to keep the Queen warm in winter, and notable for the Antarctic ice sheets is the relative isolation, in terms of mixing, of the Southern Ocean and the Antarctic climate in general.
It is constructed with a combination of observed and…
illconsidered | July 27, 2012Some interesting goings-on in the cryosphere these days.
In this chart (click the link for an interactive, larger resolution version) from the cryosphere today we can see that we are on the 45th day in a row of daily record lows in sea ice area.
Note that this is area which is different from extent. Area refers to the actual ice cover, I am not sure of the details of how that is defined in practice, whereas extent refers to any ocean surface that contains 15% or more ice cover. Again, there will be technical details I am not familiar with for determining the edges of extent (e.g. grid size…
illconsidered | May 2, 2012Check out the image below from NASA's Earth Observatory:
These are called von Kármán vortices.