A guide to the best websites to keep tabs on planet Earth

This computer model projection shows a deep plume of tropical moisture, stretching from Hawaii to the West Coast, on April 6, 2018.

Image: noaa

By Andrew Freedman2018-04-22 12:00:00 UTC

We have more information about the health of planet Earth than ever before, and lots of exciting new initiatives that will put data tools at your fingertips. Whether you're looking for global trends in wind power generation or solar installations, detailed monitoring about deforestation, or real-time weather and climate science variables, there's a way to find out what human activities are doing to our home planet.

It's all plainly evident on your computer screen, if not in your backyard.

In writing about climate change and other environmental challenges for the better part of two decades, I've relied on many databases — from governments, nonprofits, and private sector sources — to inform and illustrate stories. You should feel empowered to use these tools, too. The more information we have, the better decisions we can make.

Here are the best, most user-friendly online tools for keeping tabs on the planet.

NASA maintains a powerful, easily accessible database of Earth science info. Its Worldview tool provides daily snapshots of the entire planet, with full-resolution satellite imagery shown in real-time as satellites beam it back to scientists on the ground. I've used the visible satellite data to illustrate hurricanes and non-tropical extreme weather and to track wildfires, volcanic eruptions, smog, and sea ice trends.

This NASA satellite image shows an intense storm system in the North Atlantic on April 16, 2018.

There's a lot more to Worldview than it first seems. According to NASA, it offers more than 100 real-time products, including air quality measurements, wildfire detection, and flood-monitoring tools. You can even view the North and South Poles.

Data can be downloaded in multiple formats, including JPEG, PNG, GeoTIFF, and KML. Daily data will soon be available going all the way back to the year 2000.

Not to be outdone, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has a data portal that's particularly useful for visualizing sea surface temperature anomalies and other indicators of climate change.

A chart of sea surface temperature anomalies in 2016, showing one of the strongest El Niño events on record in the tropical Pacific Ocean.

NOAA is also the nation's main weather satellite agency, with sites that allow you to view the latest zoomed-in images.

Climate Central, a nonprofit climate science research and communications group, has one of the most advanced sea level rise mapping viewers out there. It lets you see sea level rise down the coastal zip code level, not just in terms of rise but also the frequency of coastal flooding.

This information is particularly useful for homeowners, urban planners, and policymakers. For journalists and everyday citizens, it's also informative, since it shows the vast differences between how coastal cities will fare with 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit of warming, compared to 4 degrees Celsius, or 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit.

Let's just say that 4 degrees of warming, which is close to where we're headed, is problematic at best.

Sea level rise projection for New York City in 2100 if carbon emissions continue unabated

EarthTime is a promising new database that's being rolled out on Earth Day. The collaborators in this initiative include the World Economic Forum (WEF) and Carnegie Mellon University. The goal is to put more data into easily accessible formats for the public, as well as high-level policymakers.

A neat feature of EarthTime is the ability to create your own stories that show, for example, how much deforestation is still taking place inside of supposedly protected parks, or how a drought helped foster the conditions that gave rise to a particular global conflict.

“This is a tool that can be used by schoolchildren and heads of state, it’s really interactive, it’s really visually compelling,” said Gill Cassar, program lead for environment and sustainability at WEF.

Gill and her colleagues got the idea for EarthTime through conversations at the exclusive World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. It's taken a few years to develop.

Using EarthTime, you can see how the planet has been changing over time, which opens up powerful new story angles and ideas for investigations about the role environmental change plays in society.

For example, the above animation shows flare detections from fracked oil and gas wells and other sources.

The tool integrates numerous data sets, from Climate Central's sea level rise database to NASA and NOAA remote sensing. The team behind EarthTime hopes that it will be a useful tool for journalists, activists, and many others.

“There are hundreds of thousands of stories to be told, and they can be told on the local and the global level,” Cassar said of the new initiative.

Browse this story on sea level rise, or this one on fires, in order to get a sense of the power of this new site. According to Jordan Mroziak, the coordinator of community outreach at CMU'S CREATE Lab, “It’s really impactful to be able to see data this way.”

Are you looking for data on how much greenhouse gases a particular country has emitted over time? How about per capita emissions, or each nation's commitments to reduce their carbon pollution? Rather than searching all over the internet for this information, ClimateWatch, a collaborative initiative led by the World Resources Institute in Washington, is your best one-stop shop.

Per capita emissions trends among top emitters

A particular focus of ClimateWatch is tracking the progress of each country and comparing emissions trends to the goals laid out in the Paris Climate Agreement, which went into effect in 2016.

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