Perpetual Ocean: A Van Gogh-Like Visualization of our Ocean Currents

Hats off to the God­dard Space Flight Cen­ter Sci­en­tif­ic Visu­al­iza­tion Stu­dio, which pro­duced this three minute ani­ma­tion called Per­pet­u­al Ocean. The visu­al­iza­tion shows ocean cur­rents as they swirled around between June 2005 and Decem­ber 2007, and it was all pro­duced with a com­pu­ta­tion­al mod­el called ECCO2. ECCO2 attempts to mod­el the cir­cu­la­tion and cli­mate of the ocean, help­ing sci­en­tists to under­stand how the ocean will con­tribute to future cli­mate change. It’s some heady sci­ence that also yields some visu­al­ly impres­sive ani­ma­tions. Per­pet­u­al Ocean (which was sub­mit­ted to the SIGGRAPH 2011 Com­put­er Ani­ma­tion Fes­ti­val) can be viewed in a vari­ety of for­mats from this page. More excel­lent clips can be found in our col­lec­tion of Great Sci­ence Videos. via Kot­tke

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Glob­al Warm­ing: A Free Course from UChica­go Explains Cli­mate Change

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Comments (2)
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  • fefi says:

    beau­ti­ful ani­ma­tion!

    but where is Europe?

    Also, i live in the Canaries, where we enjoy a fab­u­lous weath­er and incred­i­bly rich flo­ra and fau­na thanks to the Gulf Stream.

    I was eager to see it com­ing all the way from Mex­i­co, BUT half-way the ani­ma­tion heads South in the con­tours of Africa leav­ing us ‑and this impres­sive Stream- behind :(

  • Jonae says:

    what visu­al and ener­getic splen­dor so read­i­ly dis­played by the waters, our life,the blood of the plan­ets body.

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