Google Earth gives you a fascinating 3D tour of the planet in your web browser, and the app’s latest feature lets you look back from the present day to 1984 – so you can see how climate change has affected Earth over the course of the year. time has changed. last 37 years.
Google itself has highlighted a few areas you might want to check out: the retreating Columbia Glacier in Alaska, for example, or the shifting coastline around Chatham, Massachusetts. Through your laptop you can see cities emerge and forests disappear in the blink of an eye.
Go here in your browser to use the timelapse feature for yourself. You can search for a specific place on Earth or browse one of five suggested timelapse categories: changing forests, fragile beauty, energy resources, warming planet, and urban sprawl.
You can also access more than 800 highlight packs that Google has put together by visiting this page in your browser. Watch ice flows recede, solar parks expand, rivers change course, lakes dry up, and more, in 2D or 3D.
“Our planet has seen a rapid change in the environment over the past half century – more than at any other point in human history,” writes Rebecca Moore, director of Earth Engine & Outreach at Google Earth.
“Many of us have experienced these changes in our own communities; I myself was one of the thousands of Californians who were evacuated from their homes during the state wildfires last year. To other people, the effects of climate change feel abstract and distant, such as melting ice. caps and receding glaciers. “
The new time-lapse feature uses approximately 24 million satellite photos collected by Google Earth. Along the way, data was collected from NASA, the US Geological Survey (USGS), the European Union, and the European Space Agency (ESA).
Google says it took over 2 million processing hours to convert these 20 petabytes of images into a single 4.4-terapixel video mosaic – and to give you an idea of scale, that’s about 530,000 videos in 4K. Fortunately, Google used CO2-neutral data centers that were 100 percent geared to renewable energy.
The new footage is free to access and use, just like the rest of Google Earth, and it’s worth exploring how our planet has changed over the past 40 years. It’s not quite the same as actually visiting these places, but it can bring out the magnitude of the damage climate change is doing, from expanding deserts to shrinking glaciers.
“With Timelapse in Google Earth, we have a clearer picture of our changing planet at our fingertips – one that shows not only problems, but solutions, as well as mesmerizing natural phenomena that unfold for decades,” writes Moore.