A nice global weather visualization in your browser

Cameron Beccario's "earth" web application displays GFS model output from NCEP.
Cameron Beccario's "earth" web application displays GFS model output from NCEP (click to expand)

If you have a few minutes to spend looking at some nice graphics, browse on over to earth.

earth is a browser-based visualization of global weather conditions created by Cameron Beccario. Beccario says that "earth is a personal project I've used to learn javascript and browser programming, and is based on the earlier Tokyo Wind Map project."

The main components of the project are:

  • a script to download and process Global Forecast System (GFS) model output in GRIB2 format from the National Centers for Environmental Prediction, NOAA / National Weather Service
  • a GRIB2 to JSON converter (see the grib2json project)
  • scripts to push site files to Amazon S3 for static hosting
  • a browser app that interpolates the data and renders an animated wind map.

In addition to a variety of Javascript libraries, earth uses Unidata's THREDDS GRIB decoder.

Click on the word "earth" in the lower left corner of the display for controls and information.

Posted by: unidatanews
Dec 19, 2013

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