The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (better known as NOAA) has been producing a number of useful KML files which can be viewed in Google Earth. Today I’m highlighting a collection of updated drought maps which can be viewed with the time animation feature in Google Earth. NOAA has several collections at this web page which cover the year 2000 through to the present. The maps highlight the regions of drought conditions with colored contours which indicate the severity of drought (Dark red is the most severe). I recommend only loading a single year at a time unless you have a lot of memory. (The one covering the full ten year range is recommended to only be used with GE Pro because it only seems to work with Pro.) To illustrate (and save you the time to load), I’ve created a video showing the 2005 to present animation:
Other examples of NOAA data available in Google Earth:
- Numerous Weather Data Collections from NOAA
- Great Lakes Bathymetry in Google Earth
- NOAA Coral Reef Data
- Right Whales Sightings
About Frank Taylor
Frank Taylor started the Google Earth Blog in July, 2005 shortly after Google Earth was first released. He has worked with 3D computer graphics and VR for many years and was very impressed with this exciting product. Frank completed a 5.5 year circumnavigation of the earth by sailboat in June 2015 which you can read about at Tahina Expedition, and is a licensed pilot, backpacker, diver, and photographer.
there is a new imagery update:
Makkah, Saudi Arabia now has an image from January 2009, before it was November 2008.
Imagery Update:
and Afghanistan, is it me or the whole country is updated?
Imagery Update:
and the western half of Egypt also has medium resolution imagery now, that means whole Egypt now.
Algarrobo, Chile. Place where the biggest pool in the world is
The drought condition also showed in the weather channel.