You've probably never seen the Earth depicted in this fashion before thanks to a fantastic film that NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio (SVS) recently released.
A category-4 typhoon that emerged off the coast of China in 2005 is depicted in the movie as it developed over time. Several times during the visualization, the seven-day span is replayed.
The simulation's volume-rendered clouds were made using information from NASA's Goddard Earth Observing System Model, Version 5. (GEOS-5). The 7km GEOS-5 Nature Run (7km-G5NR) simulation was carried out on a supercomputer. This quick visualization used about a terabyte of brick map data and produced petabytes of output.
The purpose of videos like the one above, according
to the SVS website, is to provide the public a deeper understanding of our
planet and our role within it as well as an understanding of what NASA is all
about: "To foster a better understanding of Earth and space science
research activities at Goddard Space Flight Center and among the NASA research
community, the SVS works closely with scientists in the creation of
visualizations, animations, and photographs."
Reference(s) : NASA
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