Google Earth is debuting a new time-lapse tool that offers up 3D satellite images of the world spanning the past four decades.
People can use the feature to see the ravaging effects of climate change. In one instance, users can watch 12 miles of the Columbia Glacier in Alaska melt away from 1984 to 2020. Similarly, they can see the fastest-melting glacier in Antarctica, the Pine Island Glacier, disintegrate.
“It’s best for a landscape view of our world,” Rebecca Moore, director of Google Earth, Google Earth Engine, and Google Earth Outreach, said in a call with reporters this week. “It’s not about zooming in. It’s about zooming out. It’s about taking the big step back. We need to see how our only home is doing.
Google developed the new feature with help from government partners, including NASA, the U.S. Geological Survey, the European Commission, and the European Space Agency. The collaborators provided 24 million satellite images from the past 37 years.
People can explore the interactive maps independently or by using Google Earth’s Voyager, a guided tour of five thematic stories including rising global temperatures. People can also download 800 time-lapse videos Google Earth has made available in 2D and 3D.
This isn’t the Google Earth team’s first time-lapse feature. In May 2013, the team released a time-lapse feature displaying 2D images of Earth from 1984 to 2012, and it made a big update to that in November 2016. The feature announced Thursday, however, offers a 3D time lapse of the Earth’s geological changes, allowing you to look at the changes in the Earth in more detail.
Google has also released 800 time-lapse videos of different areas around the planet as free downloads. The company aims for them to be used by teachers, nonprofits, policymakers, and others to show how the geography of Earth has changed over time.
