Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Visualizing global surface ocean currents!

Here is an absolutely fascinating video.  I have a hard time trying to upload the Youtube video. Please go there to check it out. I first got the info from Ed Yong (@edyong209 on Twitter.)
A team of data visualisers at Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Centre has put together an incredible animation of sea surface currents around the world.
The visualisation was put together using data from Nasa's ECCO2model. The model maps ocean and sea ice data across the world, at impressive resolutions that can resolve ocean eddies and narrow-current systems that don't show up in coarser models. These currents tend to be the main drivers of heat, salinity and carbon transport in the oceans.
The patterns under the ocean represent the bathymetry of the depths below the surface, exaggerated 40x. The topography of the land has been exaggerated 20x. The model simulates flow at all depths, though the visualisation only shows surface flows.
Now do they have any bearing on freaque wave occurrences?  Can anyone compare those known locations where freaque waves had happened with these global currents to see if  there can be any correlations?

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