Seeing the Global Winds in Real Time

[Judi Lynn]

Seeing the Global Winds in Real Time
Dec 17, 2013 02:45 PM ET // by Larry O'Hanlon



A couple of weeks ago I pointed out a fantastic website with live visual data on winds in the United States. Now there’s another that leaves it in the dust: a full color global wind map simply called Earth.

DNews Stormtracker

In this case the visualization is wind forecasts generated every three hours by supercomputers — the same equation crunching machines that give us our daily weather forecasts. This is also a much more interactive wind map in that you can change the map projection a number of ways and rotate the globe around and zoom in easily to see more details.

The best feature of all is the that you can change the altitude. That is, you can look at winds at different heights in the atmosphere (listed as pressures). The lower the pressure, the higher in the atmosphere and the more you see jest streams that make Earth look a lot like Jupiter.

More:
http://news.discovery.com/earth/weather-extreme-events/seeing-the-global-winds-in-real-time-131217.htm#mkcpgn=rssnws1

[Wounded Bear]

1. Cool! Thanks! nt

[caraher]

2. They say you can change altitude

I couldn't figure out how. Was anyone else able to do this?

[kristopher]

3. Here you go

Click the word EARTH in the lower left corner for the control panel.

"hPa" is a measure of air pressure; the higher the number the lower the altitude.

1005 hPa at 226ft is about the height of the nacelle of a new large wind turbine, so the 1000 setting (364ft) is the best proxy.

10 hPa is about 85000ft

070 +- 58,000ft
250 +- 34,000ft
500 +- 18,000ft
700 +- 10,000ft
850 +- 5,000ft

Projection determines the type of map displayed.

Control shifts forward or back in time from present.

Clicking on the map gives location coordinates and wind speed.

Data is refreshed every 3 hours I believe.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/112760280

[caraher]

4. Thanks! <nt>