NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio (SVS) has published a remarkable video that depicts Earth in ways you’ve probably never seen before.
The video is a time-lapse model of a category-4 typhoon that formed off the coast of China in 2005. Throughout the visualization, the seven-day period is replayed multiple times.
The volume-rendered clouds in the simulation were created using data from NASA’s Goddard Earth Observing System Model, Version 5 (GEOS-5). This simulation, known as the 7km GEOS-5 Nature Run (7km-G5NR), was performed on a supercomputer. This brief visualization generated petabytes of output and made use of roughly a terabyte of brickmap data.
According to the SVS website, the goal of videos like the above is to provide the public with a clearer picture of our planet and our own place within it, as well as give people an idea of what NASA is all about: “The SVS works closely with scientists in the creation of visualisations, animations, and images in order to promote a greater understanding of Earth and space science research activities at Goddard Space Flight Center and within the NASA research community.”