Google Earth, the digital globe on which you can tour around the planet has recently added a new application. The new addition displays Earth’s carbon dioxide cycle and carbon dioxide in various layers of the atmosphere. It has not been too long since Google held a contest, which presented scientific results using KML, a data format used by Google Earth.
Tyler Erickson, a geospatial researcher at the Michigan Tech Research Institute taking help from NASA-funded researcher Anna Michalak of the University of Michigan, developed an application to show the carbon cycle. The application designed to educate the world about how carbon dioxide emissions and adsorption can be traced uses a group of complex computer models.
A network of 1,000-foot towers across the United States is prepared with instruments by NOAA to measure the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Different layers of gas are represented using various colors. Green tracks indicate particles in the lowest part of the atmosphere close to Earth’s surface, while red tracks represent carbon dioxide at higher altitudes that are immune from ground influences. Erickson spent 70 hours programming the working, application with constantly changing data for Google Earth. His work pronounced him as one of the Google’s winner in March 2009.
Via: GreenPacks