Not such an ordinary programme

Virtual globes provide environmental insight.

A UK scientist has won as award for showing how virtual globes like Google Earth can reveal new insights into environmental processes.
 
Dr Jon Blower from the University of Reading and colleagues were awarded `Best Paper' at the UK e-Science All Hands Meeting in Nottingham last week for describing how such virtual globes can aid scientific research and communicate results to a wider public.
 
"This is more than just eye candy," said Dr Blower. "Visualisation is extremely important for revealing new information about environmental processes from the local level right up to the global scale."
 
For instance Google Earth – which is based on satellite imagery so comprehensive that you can see your own home from space – can have extra information superimposed. The Reading scientists used the tool to visualise two or more scientific datasets simultaneously.
 
First of all, one dataset was used to view how Hurricane Katrina affected the sea surface temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico, while another dataset displayed the sea surface temperature with red colours of the warmer regions.
 
Another dataset tracked the passage and intensity of the hurricane with red dots representing greater intensity.

Hurricane damage

"The image showed that the hurricane caused the sea on the right-hand side of the storm to cool, which is where the strong winds would have caused upswelling of colder subsurface water," said Dr Blower.
 
"You can also see the hurricane grow in strength as it picks up energy from the warm ocean." A video revealed precisely how the storm and the sea affect each other.
 
In a different project, scientists from the British Antarctic Survey are displaying real-time data in Google Earth to help them direct scientific missions.
 
The movement of penguins recorded by scientists in the field, for example, is being combined with satellite images of nutrient concentrations to plot where the penguins, and hence the scientists, should be heading next, helping to make the most efficient use of time and resources on scientific cruises.
 
"These virtual globes are particularly useful for bringing data together visually to explore ideas before embarking on a detailed study. For example a scientist could quickly bring together data feeds to investigate the effects of weather on outbreaks of disease. There are thousands of examples of how virtual globes can help us to generate and explore new ideas about how the world works", said Dr Blower.
 
Future work could extend the capabilities of virtual globes, enabling them to visualise undersea and underground data.

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