Northern winter and summer look very different[1] (and those don't even capture sea ice). I've puzzled over how to represent such variation. Especially with deeper time paleogeography, where those 100 kyr of ice ages and sea level changes can be the variation which needs to be aggregated. One approach is sampling biased by similarity. So you snag points in time, from similar times of year and climate states. If the i…
Thats an interesting point. I think that if the climate difference is important I would allow the user to toggle between summer and winter. Or choose based on the context if you are showing specific events like wars that were impacted by winter weather. From my research (not professional or scientific) ice sheets didn’t move much between seasons so I wouldn’t include them. When you have very large intervals of 100k y…
Now educational graphics are notorious for negative training. Some aspect is done carefully perhaps, but others less so, and a menagerie misconceptions are reinforced. Some solar system introductions for example, start with such a wretched graphic, which so reinforces many common misconceptions, that even before you hit the text, you've dug a net-negative learning hole that you're never going to climb out of. Many readers would understand the topic better if they'd never seen the page.
Raising a general question: in what ways might we render an Earth globe, that gracefully aggregates/summaries some extent of time? How do you handle things that varied during that time? Diverse clouds, day/night, diversity of seasons, diversity of years, climate changes and sea levels and ice ages, moving continents and paleoclimates. An extent of some mere 10s of Myr encompasses west antarctic as both temperate rainforest and arctic tundra - so what might one paint, to represent west antarctica over that extent as a whole?
So I was taking advantage of your post, to raise a general question which has long puzzled me.
Thanks for sharing your nice work.