Earth Mapped

mapped.earth is a wonderful interactive global visualization from Aaron Becker. 

Here is an example showing winds and ocean currents along the south coast of Africa.

From the site: “Earth is a live view of the planet’s current conditions: winds, ocean currents, sea temperatures, storms, and the aurora, rendered as an interactive 3D globe over real terrain. The data refreshes itself around the clock — global weather models four times a day, ocean analyses daily, the aurora forecast every hour. Nothing here is a stock animation; every moving ribbon is advected through today’s measured or modeled fields.”

You can watch the globe spin or spin it yourself to pan and zoom to amy area of interest. Here is a Sunday image of the storm that spent the entire weekend and well beyond bearing down on us on the east coast of the USA.

There are many layers you can add. NO₂ is strikingly drawn though it is perhaps just a proxy for population.

Here is the actual population with population spikes showing an inverted terrain - low Himalayas surrounded by high populations.

And a giant dust plume coming off the Sahara.

The best part is watching the wind animations. In this case colored by temperature.