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 interactive allows twiddling those, it might not be too misleading.
One approach is open-shutter motion blur. The sometimes-there sometimes-not semi-transparent ice sheets.
One approach is, maybe call it flickered multiples. If one was showing a year, the visual could rapidly cycle through the months.
Any others?
Clouds raise similar issues. It's interesting how time-blurred cloud cover changes with seasons and decades and climate.
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 interactive allows twiddling those, it might not be too misleading.
One approach is open-shutter motion blur. The sometimes-there sometimes-not semi-transparent ice sheets.
One approach is, maybe call it flickered multiples. If one was showing a year, the visual could rapidly cycle through the months.
Any others?
Clouds raise similar issues. It's interesting how time-blurred cloud cover changes with seasons and decades and climate.
[1] Jan 2004: https://eoimages.gsfc.nasa.gov/images/imagerecords/74000/742... (2 MB) June: https://eoimages.gsfc.nasa.gov/images/imagerecords/74000/743... from Blue Marble Next Generation https://visibleearth.nasa.gov/collection/1484/blue-marble Much higher resolutions are available there.