NASA’s new ‘Earth Now’ app visualizes global climate data

March 20, 2012
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NASA's "Earth Now" iPhone app (credit: NASA)

Earth Now,” a new free iPhone/iPad app from NASA, provides dramatic visualizations of near-real-time global climate data from NASA’s Earth science satellites.

Earth Now displays data on many of the key vital signs of our planet that NASA satellites track, including current surface air temperatures, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide levels, ozone, water vapor, gravity anomalies, and sea level height anomalies.

The regularly updated data are displayed as color maps projected over a 3D Earth model that can be rotated by a single finger stroke, or zoomed in and out by the pinch or spread of two fingers. Color-coded legends indicate the relative strength or weakness of environmental conditions. Helpful descriptions provide background information on each data set.

Plans are in place for development of an Android version and for the addition of new NASA Earth science data sets over time, NASA says.

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Carbon monoxide levels in the U.S. and Europe/Africa (credit: Amara D. Angelica and NASA)

Earth Now is closely integrated with NASA’s Webby Award-winning Global Climate Change website, http://climate.nasa.gov, which is devoted to educating the public about Earth’s changing climate, providing easy-to-understand information about the causes and effects of climate change and how NASA studies it.

The app was developed by the Earth Science Communications, Visualization Technology Applications and Development Teams at JPL, with support from NASA Headquarters.