Gulf Stream Sea Surface Currents and Temperatures

  • Released Wednesday, February 15, 2012
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This visualization shows the Gulf Stream stretching from the Gulf of Mexico all the way over towards Western Europe. This visualization was designed for a very wide, high resolution display (e.g., a 5x3 hyperwall display).

This visualization was produced using model output from the joint MIT/JPL project entitled Estimating the Circulation and Climate of the Ocean, Phase II (ECCO2). ECCO2 uses the MIT general circulation model (MITgcm) to synthesize satellite and in-situ data of the global ocean and sea-ice at resolutions that begin to resolve ocean eddies and other narrow current systems, which transport heat and carbon in the oceans. The ECCO2 model simulates ocean flows at all depths, but only surface flows are used in this visualization. There are 2 versions provided: one with the flows colored with gray, the other with flows colored using sea surface temperature data. The sea surface temperature data is also from the ECCO2 model. The dark patterns under the ocean represent the undersea bathymetry. Topographic land exaggeration is 20x and bathymetric exaggeration is 40x.

Flow layers composited over star layer with a wipe from white flows to sst flows

Color bar for sea surface temperature. Units are degrees Celsius. Maps from blue= 33

Color bar for sea surface temperature. Units are degrees Celsius. Maps from blue<=0 to yellow=17 to red>= 33

Ocean flows colored white with Earth (includes alpha channel)

Ocean flows colored white with Earth (includes alpha channel)

Ocean flows colored with sea surface temperature data (includes alpha channel)

Ocean flows colored with sea surface temperature data (includes alpha channel)

Star background layer (16 bits per channel). This starfield is custom rendered for the hyperwall using a narrow field of view. This causes the star sizes to appear appropriately scaled.

Star background layer (16 bits per channel). This starfield is custom rendered for the hyperwall using a narrow field of view. This causes the star sizes to appear appropriately scaled.

The large animation above is diced-up into smaller tiles that can be played on a hyperwall (a set tiled set of displays). Each tile is named according to a standard spreadsheet convention with a1 at the upper left and e3 at the lower right. This image illustrates this naming convention used in the diced-up frame sets below. For 3x3 hyperwalls, the convention is a1 to c3.

The large animation above is diced-up into smaller tiles that can be played on a hyperwall (a set tiled set of displays). Each tile is named according to a standard spreadsheet convention with a1 at the upper left and e3 at the lower right. This image illustrates this naming convention used in the diced-up frame sets below. For 3x3 hyperwalls, the convention is a1 to c3.

Composited flows and starfield hyperwall tile a1

Composited flows and starfield hyperwall tile a2

Composited flows and starfield hyperwall tile a3

Composited flows and starfield hyperwall tile b1

Composited flows and starfield hyperwall tile b2

Composited flows and starfield hyperwall tile b3

Composited flows and starfield hyperwall tile c1

Composited flows and starfield hyperwall tile c2

Composited flows and starfield hyperwall tile c3

Composited flows and starfield hyperwall tile d1

Composited flows and starfield hyperwall tile d2

Composited flows and starfield hyperwall tile d3

Composited flows and starfield hyperwall tile e1

Composited flows and starfield hyperwall tile e2

Composited flows and starfield hyperwall tile e3

Credits

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio

This page was originally published on Wednesday, February 15, 2012.
This page was last updated on Tuesday, November 14, 2023 at 12:01 AM EST.

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