(ORDO NEWS) — Fifty years ago, astronauts aboard Apollo 17 took the iconic photo of our planet. The image became known as “The Blue Marble” – the first fully illuminated color photograph of the Earth taken by man. Now scientists have brought this image to life while testing a state-of-the-art digital climate model.
The new model can simulate climate phenomena such as storms and ocean eddies with a resolution of 1 km, which is 100 times sharper than conventional global simulations.
To recreate the image’s eddy winds, including a cyclone over the Indian Ocean, the researchers loaded weather data from 1972 into a supercomputer program. The resulting world captured the region’s signature features, such as rising waters off the coast of Namibia and long clouds. Experts say the trick highlights the growing complexity of high-resolution climate models.
They are expected to form the basis of the European Union‘s Destination Earth project, which aims to create a “digital twin” of the Earth to better predict extreme weather and develop preparation plans.
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