SAN RAMON, California – The Google Earth app adds a new video feature based on nearly four decades of satellite imagery to vividly illustrate how climate change has affected glaciers, beaches, forests and other places around the world.
The tool unveiled on Thursday launches into what is billed as the biggest update to Google Earth in five years. Google says it has undertaken the complex project in partnership with several government agencies, including NASA in the US and its European counterpart, hoping to help a mass audience understand the sometimes abstract concept of climate change in more tangible terms through its free app Earth.
Natalie Mahowald, a climate scientist at Cornell University, believes the mission can be accomplished.
“It’s amazing,” she told The Associated Press after watching a preview of the new feature. “Trying to make people understand the realm of climate change and the problem of land use is so difficult because of the long period of time and the spatial scales. I wouldn’t be surprised if this little software changes the minds of many people about the magnitude of people’s impact on the environment. ”
This is not the first time that time-lapse satellite images have been used to demonstrate how parts of the world are changing before our eyes due to the changing climate. Most scientists agree that climate change is caused by pollution caused primarily by humans.
But previous images have mostly focused on melting glaciers and have not been widely available on an already popular app like Google Earth, which can be downloaded on most of the more than 3 billion smartphones now used throughout. world
Google promises that people will be able to see a presentation at almost any time they search. The function also includes a story mode that highlights 800 different places on the planet, both in 2D and 3D format. These videos will also be available on Google’s YouTube video site, a more widely used service than the Earth app.
The feature was created from 24 million satellite images taken each year from 1984 to 2020 and provided by NASA, the US Geological Survey and the European Union, according to Google. Time-lapse technology was created with the help of Carnegie Mellon University.
Google intends to update the images at intervals at least once a year.