
An absolutely insane new video from NASA shows the Earth "breathing" in spectacular 3-D.
An eye-popping new video from NASA shows what it looks like when you combine satellite meaurements and a supercomputer model into a 3D video that looks at how carbon dioxide drifts through the atmosphere of Earth. The visualization shows greenhouse gas moving down the sides of mountain ranges and through the plains.
You can see the fires of 2015 in Indonesia releasing huge quantities of CO2, and you can witness forests grow in the summer and lose their leaves in the winter, and the impact that has on CO2 levels. Basically, you can watch the Earth breathe.
It’s not jut for curiosity’s sake. It’s a way to visualize NASA’s climate models with data from the OCO-2 satellite launched in 2014, which watched global carbon dioxide levels, an important job as concerns about climate change grow. You can watch the video below.
“Carbon dioxide plays a significant role in trapping heat in Earth’s atmosphere,” NASA said in a statement. “The gas is released from human activities like burning fossil fuels, and the concentration of carbon dioxide moves and changes through the seasons. Using observations from NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO-2) satellite, scientists developed a model of the behavior of carbon in the atmosphere from Sept. 1, 2014, to Aug. 31, 2015. Scientists can use models like this one to better understand and predict where concentrations of carbon dioxide could be especially high or low, based on activity on the ground.
“The visualization showcases information about global carbon dioxide fields that has not been seen before in such detail: The rise and fall of carbon dioxide in the Northern Hemisphere throughout a year; the influence of continents, mountain ranges and ocean currents on weather patterns and therefore carbon dioxide movement; the regional influence of highly active photosynthesis in places like the Corn Belt in the U.S.”
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