
A global map of wind, weather, and ocean conditions - fmariluis
https://earth.nullschool.net/
======
cossatot
I forked this and put plate tectonic velocity vectors (in an earth-centered,
earth-fixed coordinate system) in place of wind vectors but didn't have the
.js knowledge or time to fix all the annotations and menu stuff. I'm hoping to
get to that this fall (but I've been saying that for a year or two...):

[http://earth-analysis.com/vels/public/](http://earth-
analysis.com/vels/public/)

~~~
sevenless
Nice! Lucky the annotations aren't accurate, I wouldn't like to have 68mph
plate tectonics... :)

Interesting that there seem to be the plate tectonic versions of cyclones,
like off Baja California.

Also, is the absence of data at the poles due to a coordinate system
limitation?

~~~
cossatot
The velocities are in mm/yr. 68 mph plate tectonics would definitely be
terrifying; that's an order of magnitude faster than faults move during an
earthquake.

There are two phenomena that look cyclonic.

The larger ones have to do with motion on a sphere: Euler showed that any
velocity vector on a sphere can be represented as a rotation about a point
(called an Euler pole); tectonic plates move basically rigidly, so the whole
things rotate around a point. When that point is very close to (or within) the
plate, the rotation is quite visible. You can see this in the Antarctic plate,
halfway between Antarctica and Madagascar.

The second is an artifact of the vector visualization that Beccario used. The
atmosphere is a continuum, so particles move smoothly between one location and
another (more or less). But tectonic plates have rigid boundaries, and dive
under each other or slide rigidly past one another. But the visualization
algorithm doesn't know about these boundaries, so it creates particle paths
that cross the boundaries and appear to swirl around. This probably happens to
some degree in the mantle below the plates, but not really at the surface,
with minor exceptions that I won't get into now unless people really want to
nerd out on microplate rotation.

I'm not sure about the data gap at the poles. That's probably a real gap in
the dataset I used; I haven't looked into it.

~~~
effie
The point where velocity field vanishes seems to be a good example of the
hairy ball theorem; even if the motion on the surface is not a rotation, if
the field is continuous there has to be at least one point on the surface
where velocity is zero.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hairy_ball_theorem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hairy_ball_theorem)

------
mrb
I used this site to check wind conditions during the 2015 Tianjin explosions.
I was 90 miles away (Beijing) and was considering leaving the country had wind
been blowing in the wrong direction. At the time the risk of the hazardous
chemicals released by the explosions was completely unknown, so wind
conditions were the only objective piece of information I could base my
decision on. Fortunately the wind was blowing north/east.

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cryptoz
It's especially interesting to watch Hermine travel up the US east coast right
now. NHC forecast track here for the next 5 days:
[http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/graphics_at4.shtml?5-daynl#contents](http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/graphics_at4.shtml?5-daynl#contents)

Right now is especially fascinating because the Euro and GFS models have
recently begun to agree on the storm re-forming into a hurricane in a couple
of days off the New Jersey coast. It's a fascinating time to watch wind
patterns in the US right now!

Edit: Another really interesting tool is the Total Precipitable Water product:
[http://tropic.ssec.wisc.edu/real-time/mimic-
tpw/natl/main.ht...](http://tropic.ssec.wisc.edu/real-time/mimic-
tpw/natl/main.html)

~~~
dhimes
I have found the Euro model quite good for the Northeast US.

~~~
jamesblonde
Ecmwf are the best medium term forecasts, 3-7 days.

~~~
dhimes
Do you know a place to view ECMWF? Weather Underground isn't showing it any
more.

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jenhsun
Thanks, but I prefer this [https://www.windyty.com/](https://www.windyty.com/)

~~~
jcoffland
The interface on windyty.com is better. It does not have the problem of
filling up your browser's history with every move you make. I would like to be
able to see the color scale key with out also having to open the full control
panel.

~~~
pmarreck
Every new view should get a URL. That makes every view linkable. People who do
not do this are actually violating the spirit of the HTML/URL specs. The fact
that you see your browser history as polluted is an implementation detail that
could be rectified by simply collapsing all consecutive URL's from the same
domain over N url's into a hierarchical dropdown.

~~~
dandelany
It can also be (sort of) rectified through judicious use of history.pushState
vs. replaceState. The latter just replaces the URL in your URL bar but _doesn
't_ add an entry to your history - so every new view can get a new URL without
polluting history.

I say "sort of" because everyone has their own idea about which things should
be pushed vs. replaced. One person's "history pollution" is another's useful
tool. But in this case it seems pretty clear that simply moving the map
shouldn't push to history.

------
dandelany
If you're interested in playing with this visualization technique (particle
advection in vector fields) outside the context of geospatial applications - I
built this tool called "Vector Toy" which allows you to visualize any given
(2D) vector field this way: [http://dandelany.github.io/vector-
toy/](http://dandelany.github.io/vector-toy/) \- note that the functions on
the right side are editable.

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neptunespear
If you use 500mbar visualizations, you can visualize the "reverse" weather
pattern from last summer, with the wonky jet stream, high pressure baking the
Pacific Northwest, and cool weather in the midwest and on the East Coast:
[https://earth.nullschool.net/#2015/07/03/1800Z/wind/isobaric...](https://earth.nullschool.net/#2015/07/03/1800Z/wind/isobaric/500hPa/orthographic=-122.01,47.50,651)

Another example from July 2014:
[https://earth.nullschool.net/#2014/07/14/1500Z/wind/isobaric...](https://earth.nullschool.net/#2014/07/14/1500Z/wind/isobaric/500hPa/orthographic=-122.01,47.50,651)

Conversely, you can see how the "heat dome" of this summer smothered almost
the entirety of the contiguous United States, except for the West Coast in
general and the Pacific Northwest in particular:
[https://earth.nullschool.net/#2016/07/22/1500Z/wind/isobaric...](https://earth.nullschool.net/#2016/07/22/1500Z/wind/isobaric/500hPa/orthographic=-132.88,45.66,651)

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happyslobro
Whoa, check this out, 121 KM/h winds over the Antarctic Peninsula:
[https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/ort...](https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/orthographic=-71.49,-68.20,3000/loc=-61.478,-72.375)

It doesn't look like the other storms, in Hawaii and Florida. I wonder if
these are normal conditions for that ridge?

~~~
Symbiote
I think it's called a katabatic wind, see the bottom of
[http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~kpt/terraquest/va/science/climate/c...](http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~kpt/terraquest/va/science/climate/climate.html)

------
Symbiote
This is fantastic!

Be sure to click the menu, and browse the chemical pollution or particulate
data, and the alternative projections. XKCD fans will be pleased :-D

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Keyframe
That's really cool, but does it really have to reload data on every viewport
move/change?

I use somewhat similar app for android made by Croatian Ministry of Maritime
Affairs, Transport and Infrastructure
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=hr.mppi.nis&ah...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=hr.mppi.nis&ah=69Ap9mDbQ_49TEg0t0Iuisb69UY)
There's also iOS version [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/nautical-info-
service-croati...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/nautical-info-service-
croatia/id1134146644?ls=1&mt=8)

Really handy when you're out there.

~~~
dandelany
It doesn't reload data - it just stops the particle system advection and
restarts it when you're done moving.

And yes, this is pretty necessary (at least it's quite hard to work around).
To maintain the same view during viewport movement, it would have to keep
track of all the particle trails in lat/long space and re-project them all to
the new view. But this is implemented in canvas, so the trails (ie. particle
histories) are likely not stored in their entirety - more likely, the system
keeps track of only the particle's _current position_ , and the trails are
accomplished by drawing new line segments over the old on each frame. Yes, it
would be technically possible to keep track of each particle's full history,
and to re-project them all during interaction, but it would be pretty slow.

(I didn't make this, but I've written a very similar particle system in canvas
and ran into similar issues)

~~~
bschwindHN
I imagine you could accomplish the trails with some triangle strips in WebGL
and let the GPU do the heavy lifting. I wonder if that would perform any
better.

------
noiv
Similar, but Arctic only:
[http://www.arctic.io/#simulation](http://www.arctic.io/#simulation) Changing
dates and hours with a slider is quite informative.

------
anodari
Another is Ventusky [http://www.ventusky.com/](http://www.ventusky.com/)

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isalmon
Does anybody know what this is?
[https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/ort...](https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/orthographic=-143.19,19.58,3000/loc=-149.272,19.983)

It shows over 300F in the middle of it.

~~~
jcoffland
A storm. Look at the wave height. Also appears to be moving. It likely won't
be there later.

Oh and that's wind speed not temp. In K/h.

Edit: actually the degrees you are seeing is the wind direction.

~~~
Symbiote
Here's a link with a time, so it continues to work:
[https://earth.nullschool.net/#2016/09/02/1500Z/wind/surface/...](https://earth.nullschool.net/#2016/09/02/1500Z/wind/surface/level/orthographic=-143.19,19.58,3000/loc=-149.272,19.983)

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edpichler
This is also good [https://www.windyty.com](https://www.windyty.com)

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huangc10
this is amazing! so trippy. You can really track the two storms (US East Coast
and right of Hawaii). The eye of the storm is relatively calm at 0-6 km/hr.

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methehack
This is cool! I would love to see a similar global car traffic visualization.
I suppose that data is much harder to come by.

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Rexxar
Very nice but strangely it's becoming slower on Firefox when I'm moving the
mouse cursor around.

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sunstone
This is very cool but, wow it takes a lot of cpu cycles. My desktop tripped
out after about 5 minutes.

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foota
Anyone know what the 100km/h ridge of high speed wind over Antarctica is from?

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dcgoss
Very impressed at how well this works on mobile!

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323454
I love the options for different projections.

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jerdavis
Way to go Cambec!

~~~
cambecc
thanks!

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navyad
Awesome.

