Science On a Sphere: A Global Tour of Precipitation from NASA
-
- Visualizations by:
- Greg Shirah and
- Horace Mitchell
-
- Scientific consulting by:
- Dalia B Kirschbaum,
- Gail Skofronick Jackson, and
- George Huffman
-
- Produced by:
- Joy Ng
- View full credits
Precipitation (falling rain and snow) is our fresh water reservoir in the sky and is fundamental to life on Earth. A Global Tour of Precipitation from NASA shows how rain and snowfall moves around the world from the vantage of space using measurements from the Global Precipitation Measurement Core Observatory, or GPM. This is a joint mission between NASA and the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and offers the most detailed and worldwide view of rain and snowfall ever created.
This narrated movie is created for Science On a Sphere, a platform designed by NOAA that displays movies on a spherical screen. Audiences can view the movie from any side of the sphere and can see any part of Earth. During this show viewers will be guided through a variety of precipitation patterns and display features such as the persistent band of the heaviest rainfall around the equator and tight swirls of tropical storms in the Northern Hemisphere. At subtropical latitudes in both hemispheres there are persistent dry areas and this is where most of the major deserts reside. Sea surface temperature and winds are also shown to highlight the interconnectedness of the Earth system. The movie concludes with near real-time global precipitation data from GPM, which is provided to Science On a Sphere roughly six hours after the observation.
To download this movie formatted for a spherical screen, visit NOAA's official Science On a Sphere website below:
• A Global Tour of Precipitation from NASA
• Near Real-Time Global Precipitation Data
This is an abridged 2-D version of A Global Tour of Precipitation in 4K that is designed for flat screens.
Complete transcript available.
Watch this video on the NASA Goddard YouTube channel.
Music credits: Tides by Ben Niblett and Jon Cotton, Developing Over Time by Ben Niblett and Jon Cotton. Both tracks are from the KillerTracks catalog.
This visualization shows Multi-scale Ultra-high Resolution Sea Surface Temperature (MUR SST) data from June 1, 2014 to October 1, 2014.
More information on MUR SST can be found here.
For More Information
Credits
Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
-
Data visualizers
- Greg Shirah (NASA/GSFC) [Lead]
- Horace Mitchell (NASA/GSFC) [Lead]
- Alex Kekesi (Global Science and Technology, Inc.)
-
Editor
- Joy Ng (KBRwyle)
-
Scientists
- Dalia B Kirschbaum (NASA/GSFC) [Lead]
- Gail Skofronick Jackson (NASA/GSFC) [Lead]
- George Huffman (NASA/GSFC) [Lead]
-
Producers
- Joy Ng (KBRwyle) [Lead]
- Ryan Fitzgibbons (KBR Wyle Services, LLC)
-
Support
- Maurice Henderson (None)
Series
This visualization can be found in the following series:Related pages
-
-
ID: 13079 Produced Video
![This is a 360° video that can be downloaded and viewed on 360° video platforms such as YouTube and Facebook. Complete transcript available.Music credit: "The Answer" by Laurent Levesque [SACEM] from Killer Tracks](/vis/a010000/a013000/a013079/Inside_Hurricane_Maria_in_360.00001_print.jpg)
Inside Hurricane Maria in 360°
Read moreTwo days before Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico, the NASA-Japan Global Precipitation Measurement Core Observatory satellite captured a 3-D view of the storm. At the time Maria was a Category 1 hurricane. The 3-D view reveals the processes inside the hurricane that would fuel the storm’s intensification to a category 5 within 24 hours.For the first time in 360-degrees, this data visualization takes you inside the hurricane. The precipitation satellite has an advanced radar that measures both liquid and frozen water. The brightly colored dots show areas of rainfall, where green and yellow show low rates and red and purple show high rates. At the top of the hurricane, where temperatures are colder, blue and purple dots show light and heavy frozen precipitation. The colored areas below the dots show how much rain is falling at the surface. Created by: NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio and NASA's Goddard Space Flight CenterData Sources:• NASA/GPM Dual Precipitation Radar (DPR) precipitation rate and drop size distribution data• NASA/GPM GPM Microwave Imager (GMI) ground precipitation data• NASA/Bluemarble land imagery• NOAA/GOES16 cloud data• Hipparcos/Telescope/Tycho 2 Catalogue ||
-
ID: 4285 Visualization
Near Real-Time Global Precipitation from the Global Precipitation Measurement Constellation
Read moreAn animation of the most currently available global precipitation data from IMERG. ||
-
-
-
ID: 4382 Visualization
IMERG Precipitation and MERRA Winds
Read moreSurface winds from MERRA over IMERG precipitation rates for October, 2014.This video is also available on our YouTube channel. || This visualization of assimilated surface winds from MERRA over the IMERG global precipitation data set was created for a forthcoming Science On a Sphere program about the Global Precipitation Measurement Mission. || Surface winds from MERRA for October, 2014. || Color bar for liquid precipitation (rain). || Color bar for frozen precipitation (snow). ||
-
ID: 4372 Visualization
IMERG Global Precipitation Rates (New Colorbar)
Read moreThis movie shows IMERG liquid and frozen precipitation for the period June, 2015, through September, 2015.This video is also available on our YouTube channel. ||
-
ID: 4369 Visualization
Painting the World with Water (New Colorbar)
Read moreAn animation depicting the build-up of precipitation data on a flat map from the Global Precipitation Measurement constellation of satellites, resulting in the IMERG global precipitation data set.This video is also available on our YouTube channel. || The ten currently-flying satellites in the Global Precipitation Measurement Constellation provide unprecedented information about the rain and snow across the entire Earth. This visualization shows the constellation in action, taking precipitation measurements underneath the satellite orbits. As time progresses and the Earth's surface is covered with measurements, the structure of the Earth's preciptation becomes clearer, from the constant rainfall patterns along the Equator to the storm fronts in the mid-latitudes. The dynamic nature of the precipitation is revealed as time speeds up and the satellite data swaths merge into a continuous visualization of changing rain and snowfall. Finally, the video fades into an visualization of IMERG, the newly available data set of global precipitation every thirty minutes that is derived from this satellite data.This is a newer version of the animation and uses a modified version of the Liquid Precipitation Rate colorbar. This newer colorbar improves the display of higher rain rates. ||
-
ID: 3723 Visualization
NCCS Hyperwall Show: GEOS-5 Modeled Clouds at 5-km Resolution (Flat Map)
Read moreThis visualization shows clouds from a simulation using the Goddard Earth Observing System Model, Verison 5 (GEOS5). The global atmospheric simulation ran at a resolution of 5-km per grid cell and covered a period from Feb 2, 2010 through Feb 22, 2010. The results of the simulation were written out at 30 minute intervals. This is a high-resolution non-hydrostatic global model.This visualization was created for display on the NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS) hyperwall. This is a set of tiled high definition displays consisting of 5 displays across by 3 displays down. The full resolution of all combined displays is 6840 pixels accross by 2304 pixels down. This movie was rendered at this high resolution, then diced up into images to be displayed on each screen.A similar, lower resolution visualization is available in entry #3724. The lower resolution version is for comparison to current operational model resolution output. When displaying these visualizations on the hyperwall, we sometimes show them in a checkerboard pattern with alternating 5-km and quarter-degree tiles for easy comparison. We chose to stretch the image to fit the hyperwall aspect rather than cropping or adding black bars. ||
-
-
-
ID: 4257 Visualization
IMERG Global Precipitation Rates
Read moreAnimation of IMERG precipitation rates from 4/1/2014 through 9/30/2014 || NASA's Global Precipitation Measurement mission has produced its first global map of rainfall and snowfall. The GPM Core Observatory launched one year ago on Feb. 27, 2014 as a collaboration between NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and acts as the standard to unify precipitation measurements from a network of 12 satellites. The result is NASA's Integrated Multi-satellitE Retrievals for GPM data product, called IMERG, which combines data from all 12 satellites into a single, seamless map. The map covers more of the globe than any previous precipitation data set and is updated every half hour, allowing scientists to see how rain and snow storms move around nearly the entire planet. As scientists work to understand all the elements of Earth's climate and weather systems, and how they could change in the future, GPM provides a major step forward in providing the scientific community comprehensive and consistent measurements of precipitation. ||
-