Warsaw in 3D

This is actually pretty cool: Warsaw in 3D

Nothing too special here - we have seen these kind of 3D cities before. What is cool is to play around with the dates & times & see how the shadows change with changing sun angles over the course of the day or year.

The Becket Potholes

The western side of Gobble Mountain in East Becket (MA) apparently offers some actual glacial potholes (as opposed to the fluvial ones  in Shelburne Falls). I wish one of these sources would contain a proper map that one could use to find them, but the pics are good!

• Glacial Potholes in the Gobble Highlands
• Becket Potholes Glacial Melt

The 2026/2027 'Super' El Nino

Fact: the current SSTs in the eastern tropical Pacific are about 3 deg C higher than normal and that's more than 1 deg C warmer than the powerful 1997 & 2015 El Ninos. So, what can we expect?

1. Droughts in southern Africa (e.g. Malawi, South Africa, etc.).
2. Dry conditions & wild fires in Indonesia, Malaysia, etc.
3. Dry conditions & wild fires in the Amazon region.
4. El Nino years, and especially the year after an El Nino year, are generally hotter on a global scale - so expect 2027 to be anothe record year.

More here: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-02939-x

This sea surface elevation comparison (1997 vs 2026 El Nino) from NASA is great: https://science.nasa.gov/earth/earth-observatory/el-nino-then-and-now/

El Nino Impacts

Very cool interactive visual from The Climate Brink: https://dashboard.theclimatebrink.com/#impacts

Relief

Relief is simple & cool: just the topography as you zoom & pan around the world. Share as link or export as image & video. One gripe: the color ramp is not that great - something more 'natural' for elevtion would be better I think.

Ice Age Animations

These are really cool: visualization of the ice sheet(s) extend(s) across Europe during the last Ice Age. Notice the rising & lowering of sea level as well and its effect on land masses!

• Eiszeit-Europa
• IceMap

Can someone please make this for the Laurentide Ice Sheet?

Ice in Antarctica

We know that ice started to form in Antarctica some 34 million years ago while that did not happen in the Northern Hemisphere until about 20 million years ago - why? Elevation! GHG concentrations and thus temperatures slowly declined over the last several 10s of millions of years. At the same time, Antarctica saw tectonic uplift and at some point the rising land and falling temperatures meant that the glaciation level dropped to below the land elevation and it became possible to snow to persist year-around - cool!

The Ozone Hole: Bigger Connections

Well-done Cleo! This video offers great context centered around three important dates or decision points: 1959, 1987, and 2026. Watch the last minute or whole thing:

 

August 2026 Glacier Collapse in Nepal

Here's what happend: a section of a glacier collapsed which trigged a landslide across a river valley that damed-up the river for a while before collapsing and triggering the flood. Yes, these events happen naturally, but it seems very likely that global warming and the associated destabiliztion of glaciers and permafrost 'loaded the dice' and increases the liklhood, magnitude, and intensity of such events.

More here: Glacier collapse caused Nepal’s deadly flash flood — a sign of things to come?

Hawaii & The Jetstream

Fun graphics, data, and map here: Every nonstop to Hawaii, and what the wind costs you

Obviously it takes longer to fly west than to fly east in the mid-latitudes because of the the prevailing winds & this website does a nice job of demonstrating this without any fancy animations.

3D Undergound

Who knew: there is a website / service called DrillerDB that compiles all US well logs (something like 23 million) and also offers a 3D underground visuzalization based on these well logs. It's a little glitchy and I'm not sure about the accurcay & consistency of these data, but it would match the known regional geology prety well I would assume:

Try it here: https://drillerdb.com/underground and read more about it on Maps Mania.

National Parks: Crowds & Climate

This is a very cool analysis: what's the best time of the year to visit a given US national park if you want to balance crowds & weather? Sure, there are hardly any crowds in Glacier National Park in January, but you are in the middle of winter. Likewise, J-Tree is pretty empty in July, but can you deal with the heat?

Explore it all here: How to See the Most Popular US National Parks, Without the Crowds

The AMOC!

Excellent arcticle & visuals about the AMOC: Shifting currents - After decades of warnings, new data suggest the Atlantic’s vital circulation may withstand climate warming better than feared

Also available as a PDF here.

El Nino: Good Summary!

 

Your Name in Landsat!

Silly, but fun: Your Name in Landsat

Maybe even a good way to explore landforms in a Physical Geography class!

The Dance of the Continents

Dance of the continents is a very nice Esri Story Map showing the interplay of plate tectonics and evolution over the last 600 million years. I especially like the first section where you can step backwards in time to see the (current) continents come together first as Pangea and then again as Rodinia.

USA Surficial Geology

Verty cool new map from the USGS: Cooperative National Geologic Map: Earth's Surface geology (ArcGIS Online). Or, get it from the USGS.

Landsat Surface Temperature

This seems cool, but I have no idea what to do with it: Landsat Surface Temperature Web Mapping Application and Data. Joe Kerski has some ideas here.

The Cooperative National Geologic Map

The Cooperative National Geologic Map is cool, but what happened half-way across PA: no more data?

Yep: Tides = Weird!