Vattenhallen Science Center

On the iGlobe we can visualize scientific data about the Earth. Join us on an exhibition through time and investigate the ocean, the climate and much more.

This video gives a brief overview of fast and slow carbon cycling on Earth. Satellite imagery of atmospheric carbon dioxide combined with vegetation demonstrates the uptake of atmospheric carbon dioxide by plants on land over the annual cycle.

Young, fast carbon such as a banana comes from plants growing now. When we eat a banana and breathe out carbon dioxide, we do not add to the long-term atmospheric carbon dioxide level.

Old, slow carbon such as coal has been locked away for millions of years. When we dig it up and burn it, atmospheric carbon dioxide increases over the long-term (i.e. over a decade and longer).

One of the byproducts of burning carbon is black carbon or soot, shown over the Earth at night to highlight the correspondence between black carbon and city lights. More lights shine where more energy is generated, usually from burning fossil fuels. 

The Earth has been through many changes and continues to change today. By using past climate data together with observations and computer models, researchers at the University of Zürich in Switzerland have developed this simulation of the Earth’s surface.

The simulation above starts 21 000 years ago and reaches 8 000 years into the future, displaying changes in ice cover, sea level and vegetation since the last Ice Age. 
(The YouTube-simulation below starts at 19000 years ago and reaches 3000 years into the future.)

About 21 000 years ago, the latest Ice Age was at its maximum and, as this animation shows, large portions of Europe and North America were covered by ice.Then the ice began to retreat and the global sea level began to rise because of the melting land ice.

The simulation also contains information on carbon dioxide concentration, average temperature and population. The yellow lines on the map show the current levels. 

This simulation shows the carbon dioxide levels in the Earth’s atmosphere. A supercomputer has been used to collect carbon dioxide measurements from around the world and compile them in this video. The model shows how carbon dioxide is transported around the globe and how the levels vary throughout the year.

This type of model uses real data on emissions and atmospheric conditions, and the computer is then left to run on its own to simulate the movement of gases in the Earth’s atmosphere. In this case, the time span of the film is a one-year period,  December 1 - 31 2016.

The colours represent different carbon dioxide concentrations, from 375 (dark blue) to 395 (light purple) ppm (parts per million). The red colour represents about 385 ppm. The white plumes show emissions of the toxic gas carbon monoxide.

This film is based on data about life at deep-sea hydrothermal vents.

Viewers experience virtual dives beneath the sunlit ocean to the darkness of deep-sea vents, where hot water spews from the seafloor and fuels food webs based on chemosynthesis.

Chemosynthesis is the process by which carbon dioxide is converted into organic molecules by chemical energy (unlike photosynthesis, where light energy is used instead). Chemosynthesis is most commonly used by microbes that live in places without sunlight, for example on the bottom of the deep sea.

Deep-sea vents in different regions of the ocean have different animal species. The film tours Earth’s plate boundaries to show where deep-sea vents have been discovered, interweaving global datasets with imagery of the seafloor obtained from deep-diving vehicles. 

This dataset tracks commercial flights from the approximately 9000 civil airports worldwide. The day/night terminator is included as a time reference. Flight traffic picks up noticeably during daylight hours and drops off through the night. Each yellow tail is one plane in this visualization. 

The term biosphere refers to the regions of the surface, atmosphere, and hydrosphere of the Earth occupied by living organisms. This video shows quantity of marine and land-based plant-life as it changes throughout the seasons of the year.

The oceans are shaded on the basis of chlorophyll (green pigment in plants) concentration. Greener water signifies an abundance of phytoplankton, while bluer water indicates less. Red patches in the ocean often occur at the mouth of a major river and indicate an abundance of life caused by run-off containing higher concentrations of fertilisers and other nutrients that find their way into the rivers.

The lands are shaded to depict the vegetation. Green areas have abundant vegetation, yellow areas have little vegetation, and brown areas have no vegetation. Black patches in the video indicate places where data is not obtainable. Near the poles, this happens because of lack of sunlight during the winter season, whereas near the continents, like off the coast of Africa, it indicates lack of data due to particles in the atmosphere that are blocking sunlight, like smoke or dust. 

This image of the Nighttime Lights - 2012 is combined with data showing the human footprint of global transportation on land, in the air, and by sea. The base map of this image shows nighttime lights visible from space, which indicates areas where people live, work, and consume energy.

Red lines represent 87 000 daily flights connecting cities and cultures around the world. Blue lines represent the paths of 3500 commercial vessels over the course of a year, which is only 10% of total ocean shipping traffic. Green lines represent the world’s roads, used by over 1 billion motor vehicles. This colourful globe shows the interconnected nature of the world, but also how much energy we use to move people and goods around the planet’s surface.

It’s important to note that the nighttime lights data includes all lights at night, not just electricity;

for example, both natural and man-made fires as well as gas flaring from fossil fuel extraction can be seen in places like west central Australia, West Africa, and Siberia.

Precipitation (falling rain and snow) that occurs around the globe is the source of fresh water on which all life depends.

The heaviest precipitation is found in the persistent band near the Equator, known as the Intertropical Convergence Zone. Just outside this area, more noticeably in the Northern Hemisphere, the tight swirls of tropical storms (including hurricanes and typhoons) can be seen occasionally in the northern summer.

At mid-latitudes, the storm tracks display the swirls of low pressure systems and bands of frontal precipitation. Note the opposite directions of circulation in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres! Important year-to-year and shorter-interval variations cause strong modifications to local conditions, bringing droughts and floods.

The dataset used in this film is provided by NASA in near-real time, about six hours after the observation.