Pick a patch of Earth. Lift it into 3D.
Follow the air from valleys to high skies.
About the data & this experiment
Inspired by cambecc/earth. The globe uses its historical surface-wind sample from 31 Jan 2014. Building a region loads a current NOAA GFS forecast from Open-Meteo; its valid time appears with the 3D view.
Winds at 10 m, 500 m, 1,500 m, 3,000 m and 6,000 m above ground use separate atmospheric samples. We interpolate wind components and reported geopotential heights from eight pressure levels on a 5 × 5 regional grid, with a 10 m surface anchor. Layers follow local terrain at the indicated height; both terrain and layer spacing use the vertical exaggeration.
These are horizontal forecast winds, not a simulation of vertical air motion or valley-scale turbulence. Missing upper-level data is omitted rather than replaced with surface wind. Animation time is accelerated.
Elevation uses Mapzen / AWS Terrain Tiles, sampled to a 161 × 161 mesh. Ocean elevations are shown at sea level. Polar regions beyond 84° are excluded.
Sources: Mapzen attribution; Open-Meteo weather data (CC BY 4.0). Globe: NASA Blue Marble via WebGL Earth. Three.js (MIT).