14 November 2012

Atmospheric Aerosols Make Cool Wall Paper

Posted by Dan Satterfield

Image courtesy NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Click for a HUGE image suitable for printing or wall paper (on your computer or on a real wall!

Climate models have come a long way over the last 20 years and the image above is a good example of it. 

Here is what NASA says about it:

Portrait of Global Aerosols

High-resolution global atmospheric modeling run on the Discover supercomputer at the NASA Center for Climate Simulation at Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., provides a unique tool to study the role of weather in Earth’s climate system. The Goddard Earth Observing System Model, Version 5 (GEOS-5) is capable of simulating worldwide weather at resolutions of 10 to 3.5 kilometers (km).

This portrait of global aerosols was produced by a GEOS-5 simulation at a 10-kilometer resolution. Dust (red) is lifted from the surface, sea salt (blue) swirls inside cyclones, smoke (green) rises from fires, and sulfate particles (white) stream from volcanoes and fossil fuel emissions.

Image credit: William Putman, NASA/Goddard