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Interpreting Global Flight Maps
kodiaktau writes "Five experts including: artist, environmentalist, aviation consultant, data visualization expert and philosopher interpret a flight map showing global flights. While the imagery of the visualization is intriguing, the interpretations are particularly interesting and show how individual background and experience impact they way they view the data."
Yep. I've been wondering how air traffic affects the weather for a long time. Do the climate folks model this?
Yes. It's a subject of tremendous interest. I saw a very good presentation on this at the AIAA Aerospace Sciences Conference two years ago, looking at global data on contrail-induced clouds viewed from satellites. The data from the weeks following 9-11-2001 was particularly informative, the time when global air traffic was temporarily grounded.
There's far too much research to summarize in a paragraph or two, but my quick overview is that contrail-induced high-altitude clouds (slightly) decrease daytime temperatures (reflecting incident sunlight) and also slightly increase nighttime temperatures (reflecting outgoing IR). Overall net effect on temperature is not large, but it tends to be slightly larger in heating the polar regions (on the average, less sunlight in, so the infrared is a little more important, and a significant number of flights go over the poles). But that's my summary from a non-random selection of papers and talks I've heard, not a rigorous review of the science, though, so YMMV.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
This is a typical (if not standard) map projection. What would you suggest? East Up? Centered on?
'East up' use to be the standard on medieval maps. Hence the word 'orientation': to figure out where the orient was (even if that meant waiting for the sun to rise I guess). After the invention of the compass which points north/south, maps began to be drawn with north on top.
Non-Linux Penguins ?