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Transforming Planet
GOOGLE EARTH
A new digital tool shows how this ice sheet in Sermesooq, Greenland, has changed over time. (Left: 1984; Right: 2020)
Human activity is changing the planet. Industries release greenhouse gases, causing temperatures to warm, which melts ice caps. Growing cities are taking over green space. Deforestation wipes out rainforests. Recently, scientists at Google and other organizations created a digital tool to help people see those changes in action. It’s called Timelapse.
The tool’s designers used decades of images taken from satellites orbiting the planet to make videos for the website Google Earth. Users can navigate the globe to watch how climate change and human activity have affected Earth over time.
Seeing the world change can be scary, explains Liza Goldberg. She’s a student researcher at NASA who uses Timelapse to teach people about climate change. She reminds her students that “no action is too small to help limit the impacts of climate change on the global community.”