About the Fluid Earth Viewer

The project

Fluid Earth Viewer (FEVer) is an interactive web application that allows you to visualize current and past conditions of Earth’s atmosphere and oceans.

You can use FEVer to learn about the atmosphere and oceans by exploring the daily conditions in places where you live, work, and play or examining whole regions of the planet over years. In particular, FEVer provides hands-on visualizations of conditions in polar regions, changes they are undergoing, and connections between polar regions and the rest of the planet. Built on an open-source application, FEVer is a vehicle for modern Earth science communication, making information used by the scientific community accessible and engaging to everyone. FEVer is explorable 24 hours a day, 7 days a week using your computer, tablet, and smartphone.

Our project team is working to remove obstacles to learning about our dynamic planet, Earth! In addition to the site, our team has created:

  • FEVer-Blog: A companion website that provides additional project information, including updates to FEVer’s features and expansion of the data sets visualized.
  • FEVer-Ed: A collection of lessons that teachers and informal educators can use in their classrooms and with youth programs.
  • FEVer-Vid: A collection of instructional videos that allows you to better understand key phenomena in Earth’s atmosphere and oceans and become better acquainted with FEVer’s features.

Our Sponsor

Generic placeholder image
This project is sponsored by the U.S. National Science Foundation as an Exploratory Pathways project under the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) Program.

The Team

The team is comprised of multi-disciplinary researchers and educators from The Ohio State University committed to improving Earth Science and learning strategies in diverse education settings.

Members from OSU's Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center (BPCRC) bring their expertise in education and outreach, polar weather and climate, and computer information sciences. The team is also fortunate to have a member from OSU's School of Communication with a wealth of knowledge on user-testing and the effects and implications of new media technologies and virtual environments. Together, this team has extensive experience communicating with public audiences of all ages.

Jason Cervenec
Jason Cervenec (PI)

BPCRC Education & Outreach Director.
Oversees project and creation and field-testing of learning experiences.

Jesse Fox
Jesse Fox

School of Communication Associate Professor.
Oversees user-testing and virtual environment settings.

Bidhyananda Yadav
Bidhyananda Yadav

BPCRC Research Associate
Oversees code development and collaborates with J. Cervenec on field-testing and learning experiences.

Aaron Wilson
Aaron Wilson

BPCRC Senior Research Associate. Collaborates with B. Yadav on code development and with J. Cervenec on field-testing and learning experiences.

Michael Gravina
Michael Gravina

Front-End Developer. Collaborates with B. Yadav on code development and with J. Cervenec on field-testing and learning experiences.

In addition, the team depends on a talented group of undergraduates and Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) students working at The Ohio State University to assist in design of the user interface, conducting of user-testing, and organization of data: Bingyu (Sophia) Li, Dingyu Hu, Ruiyang Chang, Joey Wong, Craig Bossley, Michael Zhan, Mimi Cai, and Adelyn Arens. Michael Zhan is spearheading the reimplementation of FEVer in a WebGL-based framework.

Data

FEVer utilizes an enormous amount of scientifically complex data, allowing you to explore the interconnectedness of weather and climate, including between polar regions and the rest of the planet.

Data sets include:

  • Weather Data: GFS (Global Forecast System)
  • Ocean Currents Data: OSCAR
  • Sea Surface Temperature: RTGSST (Real Time Global Sea Surface Temperature)
  • Aerosols and Chemistry GEOS-5 (Goddard Earth Observing System)