Excerpt from "Dynamic Earth"

  • Released Tuesday, June 19, 2012
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A giant explosion of magnetic energy from the sun, called a coronal mass ejection, slams into and is deflected completely by the Earth's powerful magnetic field. The sun also continually sends out streams of light and radiation energy. Earth's atmosphere acts like a radiation shield, blocking quite a bit of this energy.

Much of the radiation energy that makes it through is reflected back into space by clouds, ice and snow and the energy that remains helps to drive the Earth system, powering a remarkable planetary engine — the climate. It becomes the energy that feeds swirling wind and ocean currents as cold air and surface waters move toward the equator and warm air and water moves toward the poles — all in an attempt to equalize temperatures around the world.



A jury appointed by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and Science magazine has selected "Excerpt from Dynamic Earth" as the winner of the 2013 NSF International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge for the Video category. This animation will be highlighted in the February 2014 special section of Science and will be hosted on ScienceMag.org and NSF.gov

This animation was selected for the Computer Animation Festival's Electronic Theater at the Association for Computer Machinery's Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques (SIGGRAPH), a prestigious computer graphics and technical research forum. This is an excerpt from the fulldome, high-resolution show 'Dynamic Earth: Exploring Earth's Climate Engine.' The Dynamic Earth dome show was selected as a finalist in the Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival Science Media Awards under the category "Best Immersive Cinema - Fulldome".

Follow a coronal mass ejection as is passes Venus then Earth, and explore how the sun drives Earth's winds and oceans.

For complete transcript, click here.

Also available for the entire Dynamic Earth show are the transcript and the educator's guide.

A coronal mass ejection erupts from the Sun.

A coronal mass ejection erupts from the Sun.

A coronal mass ejection approaches Venus.

A coronal mass ejection approaches Venus.

A coronal mass ejection passes Venus.

A coronal mass ejection passes Venus.

Ocean currents of the Gulf Stream.

Ocean currents of the Gulf Stream.

Ocean currents beneath the Gulf Stream.

Ocean currents beneath the Gulf Stream.

The loop current feeds into the Gulf Stream.

The loop current feeds into the Gulf Stream.

Follow a coronal mass ejection as is passes Venus then Earth; and explore how the sun drive Earth's winds and oceans. This version has an alternate narrator.

For complete transcript, click here.

Unnarrated, edited version with just the Sun to Earth coronal mass ejection (with a Venus flyby).

The entire sequence, unnarrated and formatted for the Hyperwall.

The entire sequence, unnarrated and formatted for the Hyperwall.

Starting from the coronal mass ejection and formatted for the Hyperwall.

Shows the coronal mass ejection only, and formatted for the Hyperwall.

Shows the wind flows only, and formatted for the Hyperwall.

For More Information

See http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/dynamic-earth.html

Credits

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center

This page was originally published on Tuesday, June 19, 2012.
This page was last updated on Sunday, October 20, 2024 at 11:15 PM EDT.

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