Climate change watch on Google Earth and Google Maps
Posted by Jacque on May 19th, 2008
A posting today on Lat Long Blog announces that the British Government is launching with Google Earth Outreach, and in collaboration with the Met Office Hadley Centre and the British Antarctic Survey, new layers in Google Earth that utilize geographical information to show how climate change will affect our planet and its people.
Climate Change in Our World and Climate Change in Our World, Antarctica are two KML files featured on Google Earth Outreach that offer a “unique distillation of informed, scientific and geographically-organized information demonstrating the commitment by the British Government to continue to carry out this important climate research and to communicate the results of the research by making this information readily accessible.”
Climate Change in Our World is by the Met Office UK and you can also make it show in Google Maps, notes Google Blogoscoped. The layer clearly shows scientific and economic evidence that “climate change is happening and it is probably the greatest single challenge facing the world today.”
As we have seen, many communites around the world, particularly the poor and vulnerable, suffer greatly from weather-related disasters, and the scientific consensus is that the effects of climate change will continue to increase.