Google Earth Launches Timelapse – A Video View of Our World Over Time

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Google Earth just got its biggest update in years: Timelapse. Since its origins, Google Earth has shown us a satellite view of the world around us. Now with Timelapse, Google Earth is showing us how the world around us has changed over the decades.

Using 24 million satellite photos taken since 1985, Google Earth has created an interactive experience called Timelapse. You can watch videos of how Earth has changed from anywhere in the world during the past decades. Watch glaciers flow, coastlines shift, and developments sprawl across the countryside.

This video from Google Earth introduces Timelapse:

Timelapse gives us a fascinating, and somewhat scary, view of the transformation of our environment over the years. We can witness the big picture of how our world is being changed, both by nature and by humankind. These videos provide a new perspective for those who are curious about our world. Scientists can study Timelapse videos to help devise solutions to make the world a better place.

Using Google Earth Timelapse

According to Google, Timelapse videos are available for every place on Planet Earth. You can watch videos of how the world has changed, anywhere and everywhere since 1985.

To start using Timelapse, go to g.co/Timelapse and enter a location. When the location appears on the map, the video will begin to play. As the video plays, Timelapse displays the year currently being shown in the video.

The videos begin in the year 1985 and continue through 2020. You can pause the videos to get a better view of a location during a particular year. Timelapse offers both 2D and 3D views in its videos.

Google Earth also created a YouTube playlist of hundreds of Timelapse videos with the most interesting changes around the world over the years: Google Earth Timelapse Playlist on YouTube. You can view all of these 38-second videos in order or watch only the ones most interesting to you.

You can also watch featured videos on the Timelapse site, such as Warming Planet that shows the Columbia Glacier in Alaska over time. Other videos include Changing Forests, Fragile Beauty, Sources of Energy, and Urban Expansion.

You can also search for subjects such as “glaciers” on Timelapse.

For those who want a deeper dive into Timplapse videos, Google is making 2D and 3D videos available for downloading. Check out the Google Earth Timelapse video downloads site to download these videos.

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The Making of Google Earth Timelapse

As you might imagine, creating videos of our changing world since 1985 was no easy task. Google worked with Create Lab at Carnegie Mellon, using over 24 million satellite images containing quadrillions of pixels. According to Google,

[Timelapse] took more than two million processing hours across thousands of machines in Google Cloud to compile 20 petabytes of satellite imagery into a single 4.4 terapixel-sized video mosaic — that’s the equivalent of 530,000 videos in 4K resolution! And all this computing was done inside our carbon-neutral, 100% renewable energy-matched data centers, which are part of our commitments to help build a carbon-free future.“

Timelapse is the largest video file in existence, as far as Google is aware. Its development was made possible by NASA, the United States Geological Survey’s Landsat program, and the European Union’s Copernicus program.

Google says it plans to update these Timelapse videos over the next decade so we can continue to witness how our environment is changing. The company says it hopes that the Timelapse “perspective of the planet will ground debates, encourage discovery and shift perspectives about some of our most pressing global issues.”

Your Thoughts

Have you checked out Google Earth Timelapse? Do you find these videos of our changing Earth over time fascinating and/or scary? Which locations have you checked out with Timelapse?

Share your thoughts in the Comments section below!