Cool Geo-video: Mapping Mega-Droughts

This cool geo-video comes from NASA science in an effort to communicate drought risk base on past drought & soil moisture to drive climate modeling scenarios to estimate the risk & impact of future drought in the 21st century.





Reference: NASA Earrh Observatory, Carbon Emissions Could Dramatically Increase Risk of U.S. Megadroughts, February 15, 2015  - original post - click here

1. NASA Earth Observatory (2012, February 1) Mayan Deforestation and Drought.
2. NASA Earth Observatory (2010, June 3) Global Warming.
3. NASA Earth Observatory (2010, October 1) The Water Cycle.
4. NASA Earth Observatory (2012, September 12) The Gravity of Water.

NASA images by Greg Shirah (NASA/GSFC) and Cheng Zhang (USRA), NASA Scientific Visualization Studio. Caption by Patrick Lynch, NASA Earth Science News Team.

Instrument(s): Model

Cool Geo-Pic: "Net-net" Global Sea Ice is Shrinking

Today's cool geo-pic is again from NASA's Earth Observatory. It provides a "net-net" comparison of polar ice loss, and comes to the conclusion that global sea ice is still shrinking.

"Cut & Paste" Highlights:
"....Examining 35 years of sea ice data, Parkinson has shown that increases around Antarctica do not make up for the accelerated Arctic sea ice loss of the last decades. Earth has been shedding sea ice at an average annual rate of 35,000 square kilometers (13,500 square miles) since 1979—the equivalent of losing an area of sea ice larger than the state of Maryland every year...."

.... “Even though Antarctic sea ice reached a new record maximum in September 2014, global sea ice is still decreasing,” said Parkinson, who is based at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “That’s because the decreases in Arctic sea ice far exceed the increases in Antarctic sea ice.....”

".....The line graphs above plot the monthly deviations and overall trends in polar sea ice from 1979 to 2013 as measured by satellites. The top line shows the Arctic, the middle shows Antarctica, and the third line shows the global, combined total. The sparklines at the bottom of the graphs show each year separately, enabling month-to-month comparisons across each year. The thickness of each sparkline indicates the overall growth or loss in sea ice globally. The thinning of the sparklines is indicative of the downward trend in total polar sea ice......"

Full Article:  Despite Antarctic Gains, Global Sea Ice Is Shrinking February 11, 2015
 Click Here

References:

• Parkinson, C.L. (2014) Global Sea Ice Coverage from Satellite Data: Annual Cycle and 35-Yr Trends. Journal of Climate, 27, 9377–9382.
• NASA Earth Observatory (2014, September 24) A Tale of Two Poles.
• NASA Earth Observatory (2014) Antarctic Sea Ice.
• NASA Earth Observatory (2014) Arctic Sea Ice.
• NASA Earth Observatory (2009, April 20) Sea Ice.

Earth Observatory images by Joshua Stevens. Caption by Maria-Jose Viñas and Mike Carlowicz.

Instrument(s): DMSP - SSM/I

Cool Geo-Video: Mapping Greenland's Ice Sheets

Very cool video showing ice layers from three periods (Holocene, last Ice Age & Eemian) covering 150,000 years of accumulation.

Mapping Cities: Creating 3-D City Models

From the Esri video files

Geo in BI: Embedding ArcGIS into MicroStrategy

Video from the Esri files, a good overview of how to embed GIS into BI.




Location Architect simplifies map creation in MicroStrategy

Location Architect in Esri Maps for MicroStrategy 2.0 allows organizations to define geographic relationships in their MicroStrategy data, and a corporate style for maps at the project level. A Location Architect model simplifies map creation in MicroStrategy, automatically updates maps to reflect changes in the report grid, and applies consistent mapping styles for attributes and metrics across your MicroStrategy project.