Two new Earth layers - Climate Change in Our World and Climate Change in Our World, Antarctica - have been launched by the government in association with Google Earth Outreach, the charitable arm of the online mapping software.
Announced by UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown at the Google Zeitgeist conference in Hertfordshire, the first animated tool incorporates images from the Met Office Hadley Centre in order to display changing global temperatures across the world over the next 100 years. But instead of just showing you changing figures, temperature changes are represented by shifting colours over the continents - so Antarctica, for example, will glow a brighter red as the years go by and its temperatures rise.
What's more, the second layer applies research from the British Antarctic Survey that monitors the impact of climate change in Antarctica, producing clear images of the retreat of the ice from the continent's shores.
Following the announcement, the British government appeared optimistic, with the Prime Minister stating: "I think this will be a huge tool for making everybody aware of the huge climate changes of our time."
Furthermore, environmental secretary Hillary Benn added: "By helping people to understand what climate change means for them and for the world, we can mobilise the commitment we need to avoid the worst effects by taking action now."
So far, however, the reviews the layers have had across the blogosphere have been mixed. A blogger writing for Greenpeace, for instance, suggests that the features, despite their spectacular graphics, are just a "whizz-bang new bit of spin" from the British government. Another blogger for the LA Times calls the application "disappointing", claiming, "Somehow I thought I'd get animations of cities dramatically getting submerged, lakes during out to turn into deserts. 'Climate Change in Our World' is much less dramatic than that."
Certainly, the layers provide an excellent way for new and innovative research from the British Met Office and the British Antarctic Survey to find a new, global audience, while Gordon Brown could probably use the association with a "hip" tool like Google Earth to combat the general perception of his staid image.
But what exactly do the Google team get out of this? Last week, bigmouthmedia took a look at the new world of online maps, and the inventive new products - like Microsoft's WorldWide Telescope - that could slowly eat away at the search engine's market share of online mapping software. If there's anything about Google Earth that could help it maintain and grow its user base, it's the imaginative layers it lets its users create and manipulate.
What's more, the vast army of web tools that Google has at its disposal means that it is able to incorporate these features into Google Earth and Google Maps at regular intervals. The acquisition of Spanish photo sharing site Panoramio last year, for example, has meant that photos are now a regular result in Google Maps searches, while this week it was announced that users can now browse Google News headlines through Google Earth in the click of a button.
It's unique developments like these that will see Google stay ahead of the game and, even if the likes of Microsoft manage to eat away at some of Google Earth's wide user base, it's likely to be some time before they're able to offer the same breadth of information in one global 3D home.
