Mapped: the world’s wind patterns
Along with temperatures, fires, rainfall, and dust
We’ve spent centuries, if not millennia,trying to work out what “normal” is when it comes to wind, weather, clouds, and temperatures. This field of research, and working how how that “normal” may change in the future, is known as climatology.
One of the climatologist’s most effective tools is the supercomputer. By combining the laws of physics that we’ve tested (things like how heat transfers, how fluids behave and gravity) with observations from the real world, we can build up what’s known as a General Circulation Model — a computer model of how energy and different kinds of matter move around the globe.
That’s what you see in these videos, from Nasa’s Goddard Earth Observing System Model, Version 5 ( better known as GEOS-5), is exactly that — a beautiful visualisation of the kind of natural variability we see on a daily basis on Earth. For best effect, watch the following in 1080p and fullscreen.
This represents the world’s winds, modelled for two years between May 2005 and May 2007. Red streaks are the fastest — they represent stratospheric jet streams, found in both hemispheres. The white streaks represent surface winds, and the tight white circles are tropical cyclones.
Here’s the same model looking at dust, sea salt, tiny particles of soot and sulphates — together known as “aerosols”. Dust is red, sea salt is blue, soot is green and suphates show up as white. It’s fascinating to see where different particles comes from, and how fast they’re transported by the world’s winds.
Next up we’ve got rainfall, shown in different colours according to its intensity with red being the highest. In white, you can see a quantity known as “total precipitable water”, which indicates how much water vapour there is in the sky available to fall out as rain — it’s a good indication of how wet a weather system is likely to be.
This video tracks the world’s fires (red) and also shows aerosols in the same way as above, on a rotating globe. At any point, a surprising amount of the Earth’s surface is on fire — particularly during summer in the northern hemisphere. Vast swathes of Africa, South-East Asia and South America burn thanks to both lightning and mankind. However, fires are part of nature’s ecosystem-clearing processes, allowing an area choked by underbrush to be restored to good health.
Finally, this collection wouldn’t be complete without looking at surface temperatures. Colours range from -3C (blue) to 37C (red), with colder temperatures shown without colour. You can clearly see the day-night cycle, how much effect land has on temperatures, and also how warm Europe is kept during the winter by the currents in the North Atlantic relative to other places at the same latitude.
Thanks to Philippa Warr for alerting us to these maps.
Looking Up is a collection on Medium that offers a home for those obsessed with the world above our heads. It’s curated by @duncangeere. If you enjoyed any of these articles, please click the “recommend” button below, and if you want more, then click the “follow” button to make sure you don’t miss anything we publish in the future.
