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Amazing Earth Wind Map

 
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Waterat Pat



Joined: 10 Apr 2000
Posts: 192

PostPosted: Sat Jan 25, 2014 10:55 am    Post subject: Amazing Earth Wind Map Reply with quote

Has to be the coolest computer graphic I have seen in awhile. Just grab the world with your mouse to rotate the earth.

http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/isobaric/1000hPa/orthographic=95.76,37.20,287
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TheItalianJobber



Joined: 09 Sep 2003
Posts: 121

PostPosted: Sat Jan 25, 2014 11:47 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

w-o-w...
"Using data from the Global Forecast System (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Forecast_System), the map updates every three hours, showing near-current weather patterns worldwide".

This unbelievable stuff is free while in many hotels they still want to charge for wi-fi... Rolling Eyes
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windfind



Joined: 18 Mar 1997
Posts: 1899

PostPosted: Sat Jan 25, 2014 1:11 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I love visualization tools like this for seeing a countries overall wind patterns. But they are largely useless in forecasting wind or seeing the current actual wind in smaller region.

This display uses the old GFS model which only has a 27-35 kilometer resolution. So the GFS model can not take into consideration things like the gap at the Golden Gate or the canyon of the Gorge so the wind velocity is way off and the GFS will rarely show any wind in the Bay Area or Gorge. But for large structures like Baja's Sea of Cortez it is fairly accurate as I can attest today since I will be windsurfing over those waters on a 4.7 in an another hour.

To put resolution in perspective... we at weatherflow run the 1 kilometer WRAMS for the S. F. Bay Area which gives it 30X the resolution of this GFS display and for the America's Cup we ran the model at 250 meter resolution which, with 100X the resolution, had incredible accuracy.

Also remember that the wind you see in this GFS display is NOT the actual wind. It is just what a very low resolution model forecasts the wind to be at each location.

Still, this is an amazing tool for seeing world wide wind patterns. Give us 20-30 supercomputers and we would run a similar visualization of the world at 250 meter resolution. All we need to do is raise our monthly charge to about $100,000/person.

Mike Godsey
iwindsurf.com/ikitesurf.com



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