Google celebrates Earth Day with delayed satellite imagery showing melting glaciers, snow removal, deforestation and coral bleaching to remind users of the impact of humanity on climate and the environment.
Google’s Dashboard for Earth Day 2022 includes four gifs created from satellite images and photos from The Ocean Agency, which will rotate throughout the day.
They show a glacial retreat on top of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania between December 1986 and 2020 and melting glaciers in Sermersuk, Greenland, between December 2000 and 2020.
Other images show the results of coral bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef near Lizard Island in Australia between March 2016 and October 2017 and the deforestation of the Harz Forest in Eland, Germany, between December 1995 and 2020.
The Great Barrier Reef affected by the sixth coral bleaching event – video
Climate counselor Leslie Hughes, a professor of biology at Macquarie University in Sydney, said images of coral bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef were a “very high-impact visual image” that would resonate.
“Our main natural icon, which we are managing, is a symbol of the impact of climate change on an extremely diverse ecosystem,” Hughes said.
“Our physical and biological world is transforming before our eyes, and that’s what these images emphasize, and so there’s absolutely no time to waste.”
The Great Barrier Reef went through its sixth mass bleaching in March with aerial surveys showing almost no reefs in a 1,200km heat-avoiding stretch – the first known to have occurred in the year of La Niña.
Hughes said of those elsewhere, images of the retreat of glacial ice would be just as significant.
In New Zealand, huge and ancient glaciers are thinning at an alarming rate.
The National Institute for Water and Atmospheric Research (Niwa) found that between 1977 and 2014, a third of the permanent snow and ice was lost to the Southern Alps – a dramatic decline that has begun to accelerate rapidly over the past 15 years.
Most recently, the summer of 2017-2018 brought temperatures 3C higher than the average in New Zealand, shrinking some glaciers so much that they almost disappeared.
Elsewhere, artifacts long buried in the Italian Alps are revealed as the ice melts, leading to the discovery of equipment left by soldiers camped on peaks during World War I and a 5,300-year-old crime scene when Yotzi’s mummified body was found by tourists.
What has been good for archaeologists is also a symptom of the catastrophic threat posed by climate change. Forni, one of the largest valley glaciers in Italy, has retreated 800 meters in the last 30 years and 1.2 miles (2 km) in the last century.
The images contrast with the positive note in the animation published for Earth Day 2021, which, according to the company, is designed to “encourage everyone to find a little action they can do to restore our Earth.”
Hughes said the opposing images published in 2022 may be a response to the IPCC report26 and are important for raising awareness.
“I think when you’re sitting in a middle-class environment and it’s a nice day and the sun has risen or set, it’s easy to be complacent about the greater forces at work in our climate system and the impacts that those forces have,” Hughes said. .
“So reminding people that just because it’s a good day, climate change hasn’t gone away is really important.”
Alphabet, the company that runs Google, has said it has been carbon-neutral since 2007 and plans to run all of its data centers entirely on renewable energy by 2030.
The company will use 15.5 terawatt hours of electricity in 2020, mostly to power its data centers. It also reduced its waste by 40% to 28,864 tonnes, but increased water consumption.
Its data for 2021 has not yet been provided, but the company says it has offset its emissions by purchasing enough energy from renewable sources and compensation to cover its consumption.
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