Google Earth’s Impressive Feature Captures Changes on Earth Over the Past Decades

Google Earth has recently launched its newest feature of 3D timelapse video which allows users to take a glimpse at how the Earth has altered due to climate change over the last few decades.

Specifically, it takes you to travel the time from 1984 to 2020 and witness the effects of climate change during the years, such as deforestation and glacier events. This 3D feature also provides a series of satellite imagery on urban expansion, natural disaster, agriculture, and infrastructure in several locations around the globe.

Millions of images were combined for Google Earth

This project worked with Landsat, a joint NASA/USGS program and Copernicus, which is part of the European Union’s program as well as European Space Agency. As regards the development of technology for Google Earth’s 3D timelapse video, they collaborated with Create Lab, Carnegie Mellon University.

“We have combined Landsat imagery with imagery from the Sentinel-2 mission, part of the European Union and European Space Agency’s Copernicus Earth observation program,” wrote Google Earth on the About page.

Credit: Changing Forests – Soybean Farming, San Julian, Bolivia / Combination by Shina Yunita via Google Earth

Google confirmed that in order to run this feature, they required to collect more than 24 million satellite images taken over 37 years, from 1984 to 2020. According to the statement from Google, it required more than 2 million hours processing on thousands of machines in Google Cloud to collect 20 petabytes of satellite imagery into one video mosaic of 4.4 terapixels, the equivalent of 530,000 high-resolution videos.

Give the timelapse feature a try

Users can directly visit Google Earth’s website to access this 3D timelapse video feature, and then click on the ‘Launch Earth’ button. On the left-hand corner, users can pick on the ‘Voyager’ icon among six provided image icons.

Credit: Urban Expansion – Rapid Expansion, Shanghai, China / Combination by Shina Yunita via Google Earth

Next, a pop-up window will appear in which users can swipe to select ‘Timelapse in Google Earth’ that will direct them to the feature. There are several shortcut menus that can be accessed to look over featured locations around the world. Users can also type in preferred location in the search box – Search the Planet.

The new feature of Google Earth’s timelapse can be a credible source for entertainment, education, or research purposes. Remarkably, Google says they will continue to update Google Earth with new timelapse imagery for the next decades.

Credit: Warming Planet – Shrinking Lake, Lake Urmia, Iran / Combination by Shina Yunita via Google Earth