A mesmerizing new visualization of ocean currents has been compared to the paintings of Van Gogh.
NASA used the space agency’s ocean model, ‘Perpetual Ocean 2’, to release a video.
‘Estimating the Circulation and Climate of the Ocean’ (ECCO) is a sequel to the popular first version from 2011—and the new visualization now shows currents not just at the water’s surface.
‘Perpetual Ocean 2’ quickly went viral, with many comparing the current swirls to Vincent van Gogh’s iconic painting Starry Night from 1889.
The ECCO ocean circulation model incorporates observations from spacecraft, buoys, and other on site measurements to keep the model accurate. The data used here is from ECCO-2 and covers the years 2021-2023.
“In 2011, we used ECCO2 to create a visualization called Perpetual Ocean. Perpetual Ocean continues to be extremely popular, but it only shows ocean currents on the surface,” said a statement from NASA Goddard.
Starry night, Swirly ocean
“In this new visualization, we use the ocean’s 3D velocity field to visualize some of the strongest ocean currents. We release virtual particles in the ocean and allow them to move with the ocean’s three dimensional velocity field.”
“Each particle has a trail to better see its direction of movement. The particles initialized above 600 meters in depth have a trail length of 3 days, those initialized deeper than 600 meters have a trail length of 6 days.”
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“The particle trails help identify the strongest currents in the world that are squeezed in narrow belts on the western side of each ocean basin.”
See the videos from NASA at their website, here.
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