A collection of original data animations exploring the ocean through satellite and reanalysis data, mostly rendered on the Spilhaus projection. Free to use for teaching and outreach (CC-BY 4.0, please credit Oceanofísica/ULPGC).
Sea Surface Temperature
86 years of ocean warming (1940-2025)
Annual mean SST anomaly relative to 1991-2020, ERA5 reanalysis, one frame per year.
Data: ERA5, Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S)
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Monthly SST anomaly (1982-2025)
Same baseline, monthly resolution: watch El Niño and La Niña flare and fade, marine heatwaves flash on and off, and the seasonal cycle itself become visible as the ocean "breathes."
Data: ERA5, Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S)
Monthly SST trend (1940-2025, 3D globe)
The ocean warms more slowly and unevenly than land, its huge heat capacity buffers the swings that continents experience. Even so, the pattern is far from flat: some regions are warming markedly faster than the global ocean average, while the North Atlantic subpolar gyre, the famous "warming hole", has resisted the trend for decades, a signature tied to a weakening subpolar circulation. It's one of the few regions on Earth's surface bucking the trend so persistently.
Data: ERA5, Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S)
Monthly temperature trend (1979-2025, 3D globe)
The surface is both colored and deformed by the trend: it bulges outward where warming is fastest, and dips inward in the rare pockets that have cooled. To be clear, this is a visualization device, not a physical measurement. Unlike gravity-anomaly globes, where the deformation is the real physical quantity, here the bulge is a stylistic amplification of the color, meant to make an otherwise subtle pattern impossible to miss.
Data: ERA5, Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S)
Sea Level
Sea level anomaly (1993-2025)
Monthly satellite altimetry anomaly vs. the 1993-2012 baseline. Watch for mesoscale eddies drifting westward (except in the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, where the dominant flow reverses that tendency), and for polar regions flickering in and out as sea ice advances and retreats each year.
Data: Copernicus Marine Service (CMEMS), satellite altimetry, DUACS vDT2024
Sea level trend (1993-2025, 3D globe)
The pattern is far from uniform. While the global average sits around 3-4 mm/year, some regions, especially the western Pacific, are rising two to three times faster, driven by ocean dynamics and heat redistribution, not just total volume added. A few pockets show little change or even a slight decline over the same 33 years. Global averages hide this kind of regional inequality, and for coastal communities, the regional number is the one that actually matters.
Data: Copernicus Marine Service (CMEMS), satellite altimetry, DUACS vDT2024
Sea Surface Salinity
Monthly sea surface salinity (1993-2025)
Absolute field, not anomaly: the structure itself, subtropical gyres, polar dilution, semi-enclosed seas, is the story.
Data: CMEMS multi-observation sea surface salinity
Mean sea surface salinity (3D globe)
Data: CMEMS multi-observation sea surface salinity
Air-Sea Heat Flux
Monthly net heat flux (1979-2025)
Red = ocean gains heat, blue = ocean releases it. Watch the whole map flip with the seasons, and look for mesoscale eddies breaking the seasonal pattern locally.
Data: ORAS5 (ECMWF ocean reanalysis)
Mean net heat flux (3D globe)
Data: ORAS5 (ECMWF ocean reanalysis)
Sea Ice
Sea ice concentration trend (1979-2025)
Data: ERA5 (Copernicus Climate Change Service)
Data Stories
150 years of ocean exploration (1870-2024)
Every station in the World Ocean Database that sampled to at least 100m depth, flashing at its exact place and time. From HMS Challenger through isolated national expeditions, to the transoceanic collaboration of the postwar decades, to Argo's drifting floats.
Data: World Ocean Database (NOAA NCEI)
Download MP4 · Watch on YouTube