26 January 2023
Extra enjoyable with maps!
Earlier this month after I wrote about wind velocity maps (How Quick Is The Wind Blowing?) Steve Thomas despatched a hyperlink to the earth mapping web site. I remembered inexperienced swirling maps by myself weblog at Winds On Water, however seven years in the past I didn’t look additional than the default floor winds.
The earth web site is, in their very own phrases, “a visualization of worldwide climate situations forecast by supercomputers up to date each three hours.” Their motion maps embrace excessive altitude winds, ocean currents, temperatures, fires and extra.
Let’s begin exploring with as we speak’s map of floor winds, proven beneath (click on right here). I assure it’s going to look completely different than this picture I pulled yesterday.
To see the legend and alter the map click on on the [earth] icon at backside left. The default setting is:
- Mode=Air
- Animate=Wind
- Top=Sfc (floor)
- Overlay=Wind
To see winds at larger altitude I select Top=250. [250 hPa = 250 hectopascals = lower pressure = higher altitude. The lower the hPa number, the higher the altitude above the surface.]
- Mode=Air
- Animate=Wind
- Top=250
- Overlay=Wind
The wind is screaming purple-white at 250 hPa. It seems to be just like the jet stream.
To realize the map of ocean currents proven at high I selected:
- Mode=Ocean
- Animate=Currents
- Overlay=HTSGW (Important Wave Top)
Click on right here to see an motion map of the Gulf Stream on the ocean’s floor (screenshot at high). Watch it rounding the tip of Florida, then pumping north and east into the Atlantic. There are vortices within the Gulf of Mexico.
Check out the opposite choices on earth to have extra enjoyable with maps.
(all maps are screenshots from earth, base maps for these screenshots may be discovered at this hyperlink https://earth.nullschool.web/#present/wind/floor/stage/orthographic=-65.93,34.58,803)