Worried about reduction of the Earth’s cryosphere? At least you can see the coolest animation of it on the web. This video from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center is an amazing combination of geo-visualization, temporal modeling, and 3-D modeling. All in a single shot of cruising over Antarctica (replete with roving annotations) to settling on sections of South and North America to moving to the Arctic and finally on to Greenland. It’s also a seamless blend of very different models (e.g., movements of glaciers and changes in mountain snow cover). The site mentions the importance of continued collection of data. I hope that viewers get a sense of the enormous quantity of spatial data needed to produce this seven minute animation.
No GIS is mentioned, however. Sigh.