Google’s new timelapse shows 37 years of climate change anywhere on Earth, including your neighborhood

Google Earth’s latest feature allows you to watch the climate change in four dimensions.

The new feature, called Timelapse, is the biggest update to Google Earth since 2017. It is also, as far as its developers know, the largest video taken of Earth on Earth. The feature compiles 24 million satellite photos taken between 1984 and 2020 to show how human activity has transformed the planet over the past 37 years.

“Visual evidence can cut to the core of the debate in a way that words cannot and communicate complex issues to everyone,” Google Earth Director Rebecca Moore wrote in a blog post Thursday.

Moore herself has been directly impacted by the climate crisis. She was one of many Californians evacuated because of wildfires last year. However, the new feature allows people to witness more remote changes, such as the melting of ice caps.

“With Timelapse in Google Earth, we have a clearer picture of our changing planet right at our fingertips — one that shows not just problems but also solutions, as well as mesmerizingly beautiful natural phenomena that unfold over decades,” she wrote.

Some climate impacts that viewers can witness include the melting of 12 miles of Alaska’s Columbia Glacier between 1984 and 2020, Fortune reported. They can also watch the disintegration of the Pine Island Glacier in Antarctica. The changes are not limited to the impacts of global warming, however.

Moore said the developers had identified five themes, and Google Earth offers a guided tour for each of them. They are:

1. Forest change, such as deforestation in Bolivia for soybean farming
2. Urban growth, such as the quintupling of Las Vegas sprawl
3. Warming temperatures, such as melting glaciers and ice sheets
4. Sources of energy, such as the impacts of coal mining on Wyoming’s landscape
5. Fragile beauty, such as the flow of Bolivia’s Mamoré River

However, the feature also allows you to see smaller-scale change. You can enter any location into the search bar, including your local neighborhood, CNN explained. The feature does not offer the detail of Street View, Gizmodo noted. It is intended to show large changes over time, rather than smaller details like the construction of a road or home.

The images for Timelapse were made possible through collaboration with NASA, the U.S. Geological Survey’s Landsat satellites and the European Union’s Copernicus program and Sentinel satellites. Carnegie Mellon University’s CREATE Lab helped develop the technology.

To use Timelapse, you can either visit g.co/Timelapse directly or click on the Ship’s Wheel icon in Google Earth, then select Timelapse. Moore said the feature would be updated annually with new images of Earth’s alterations.

“We hope that this perspective of the planet will ground debates, encourage discovery and shift perspectives about some of our most pressing global issues,” she wrote.