GIS in the Classroom Blog 7: How can we use GIS to investigate atmospheric hazards?

In the UK, where weather is allegedly our favourite topic of conversation, to what extent are people aware of the role of geospatial knowledge and skills in forecasting the weather? Many blogs could be written about this, but here we’ll just take a brief look at some of the ways in which GIS helps with visualisation and data analysis in the study of atmospheric hazards.

The complexities of these hazards can be challenging to teach and learn about, with so many invisible and counter-intuitive things happening in the atmospheric system…in three dimensions! Consequently, students’ knowledge must be carefully sequenced in steps to build well-embedded schema of understanding about the key features and processes, as well as the impact of climate change.[1] Fortunately, geospatial visualisations can support such learning.

One of the most useful teaching resources to appear over the last decade is earth.nullschool.net created by Cameron Beccario (@cambecc). It just happens to be a geospatial resource too and doubles up as a handy way to teach ‘about’ GIS as well. Vast amounts of real time georeferenced atmospheric data are visualised, including information about what’s happening at different levels in the atmosphere and in the oceans too. Several other very good visualisation apps have adopted a similar approach such as Ventusky and Windy.com.

Atmospheric circulation can be particularly difficult to grasp, so earth.nullschool.net can assist because it visualises wind speed and direction, weather systems, sea surface temperatures (SST), thermohaline circulation (e.g. Gulf Stream), high level jet stream activity (250 hPa) and the associated energy transfers which drive the ‘weather machine’.

Once students are familiar with such fundamentals, application to atmospheric hazards can follow. Here is a clip with commentary[2] explaining the formation of Typhoon Haiyan using more advanced options in earth.nullschool.net, including the climate change-linked key driver of sea surface temperature anomalies (SSTA) and the calendar to provide a ‘window’ back in time.

The Typhoon Haiyan story map brings together GIS resources and more conventional media to help students study one of the worst tropical storms on record.

For further ideas on using earth.nullschool.net, David Preece (@DoctorPreece) has written a very useful blog explaining ‘How I teach … using Earth Null School’ and similarly Anthony Bennett has shared justifiable enthusiasm ‘10 reasons you need earth.nullschool in your geography classroom’.

GIS is commonly used to monitor storm hazards. In early autumn 2021, georeferenced data about Hurricane Ida was added to an ArcGIS Online time-enabled web map to visualise its track, then shared via Web AppBuilder including chart widgets showing how pressure and wind speed changed along its course, so that students could apply theoretical knowledge about tropical storm behaviour to a real hurricane.

Lightning hazards can also be very effectively visualised using GIS. LightningMaps.org provides real time maps covering the whole world also showing thunderfronts emanating from strikes. Here we can see a lightning a severe storm in East Anglia on 9th May 2023 (x10).

The ‘slow-burn’ nature of drought events can make them difficult for people to comprehend as an atmospheric hazard. GIS maps can help us to grasp how they happen, such as the excellent Groundwater Levels map by the British Geological Survey. We can see the ‘anatomy of a drought’ take shape in England and Wales from 2010-2012. Why not follow the link and look back to the famous 1976 drought?!

[1] Climate change will be part of another blog.

[2] 'Everywhere you go, always take the weather with you' presentation at Geographical Association Conference 13 Apr 2022 by Brendan Conway