Google Earth users can see the dreadful impact climate change has had over the past four decades.
Google Earth desktop and mobile time lapse is now available worldwide. PHOTO: GOOGLE. Google Earth users can see the dreadful impact climate change has had over the past four decades. Google’s latest feature, Timelapse, is an eye-opening engineering marvel that provides visual evidence of how Earth has changed due to climate change and human behavior. This tool takes a static image of the platform and transforms it into a dynamic 4D experience, allowing users to click through the timeline highlighting melted ice caps, receding glaciers, massive urban growth, and the impact of forest fires on agriculture. Google says it took two million processing hours on thousands of machines in Google Cloud to compile 24 million satellite photos, 800 videos captured and recorded between 1984 and 2020 on Timelapse. The company has worked with NASA, the US Geological Survey’s Landsat program, the European Union’s Copernicus program and Sentinel satellites, and the Carnegie Mellon University CREATE Laboratory, to help develop the technology. Satellite images taken of Dubai in 2002 and 2020. Source: GOOGLE. To explore Timelapse in Google Earth, a user can type any location into the search bar to see the location in motion, whether it’s a landmark or a neighborhood where they grew up. Google says it has removed elements such as clouds and shadows from images, and has calculated a single pixel for every location on Earth annually since 1984; put them together into one Timelapse video. Google Earth’s Timelapse tool shows the changing coastlines, the dramatic expansion of the cityscape and agricultural land, as well as the simultaneous degradation of glaciers, forests, and rivers. Through Timelapse one can see the coast of Cape Cod gradually shifting south, the development of agriculture in the middle of the desert in Al Jowf, Saudi Arabia and the development of Songdo beach, a beach. man-made in Busan, Korea. “Visual evidence can get to the core of a debate in a way that words cannot convey complex issues to people,” said Rebecca Moore, director of Google Earth. Google has also made guided tours through its Voyager storytelling platform, around some of the broader changes seen in the image. Satellite images show the Aral Sea in Kazakhstan in 1988 and 2006. Source: GOOGLE. Google said it hopes governments, researchers, journalists, teachers, and advocates will analyze their images, identity trends, and share their findings. “We invite everyone to use Timelapse and share it with others,” Ms. Moore said: “We invite everyone to use Timelapse and share it with others. Timelapse in Google Earth is a miniature to gauge the health and well-being of our single home and a tool that can educate and inspire action “. Climate change is causing frequent and more severe floods, droughts, storms and heat waves as global average temperatures rise to new record levels. Scientists have warned that an increase in global greenhouse gas emissions could lead to extreme weather conditions and higher risks from natural disasters. While the new tool can help raise awareness about our current climate crisis, a bigger challenge is translating that perception into action. Dr Jennifer Marlon, an environmental science researcher at the Yale Program on Climate Change Communications, said: “There is a large number of people who still believe that human activity cannot change the entire planet. . Those people probably won’t surf on Google Earth. But maybe their kids will watch at school and take them home telling their parents, “Mom and dad, look at this.” Google Earth’s time lapse is now available worldwide.
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