Professor Creates Polar Globe Climate Data Visualization Tool that Can Reveal Changes in Atmosphere in Real Time
From Arizona State University:
PolarGlobe is a web-scale scientific visualization tool to support ready access and interactive analysis of multi-dimensional climate data. It’s capable of illustrating changes in the atmosphere vividly in real time.
Designed specifically for polar scientists seeking to understand the ice caps, the tool is also useful for high school science teachers and weather fanatics.
“It’s not just for research. Every day, weather watchers can see what’s going on,” said Li, an associate professor in the School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning at Arizona State University. “We would love to inspire the next generation into science.”
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Historical data in the tool goes back to 2010. Current data is updated every six hours. The tool uses artificial intelligence and machine learning so it continues to learn on its own as new data is generated.
“We gather this data in real time, process it, and digest it into our visualization system and host it by providing a very user-friendly interface which is web-based, so anyone with a browser can get onto the tool and analyze a lot of the atmospheric phenomenon,” Li said.
It’s a huge amount of data: 350 terabytes — the equivalent of 70 years of letters delivered by the U.S. Postal Service.
Read the Complete Overview Article (via ASU)
See Also: Polar Globe Intro Video
Direct to PolarGlobe
Filed under: Data Files, News

About Gary Price
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area. He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit. Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com. Gary is also the co-founder of infoDJ an innovation research consultancy supporting corporate product and business model teams with just-in-time fact and insight finding.