Ocean Plastic & Climate Crisis

The five major ocean garbage patches — Great Pacific (1.6M km²), North Atlantic, South Pacific, South Atlantic, and Indian Ocean — are represented as GeoJSON Polygon features with hand-traced approximate boundary coordinates. Each polygon stores the patch name, estimated area in km², approximate plastic mass in tonnes, and year of discovery. They are rendered as semi-transparent orange polygons using globe.gl's polygonsData() API at a slight altitude above the ocean surface, giving a clear aerial silhouette of accumulation zones.

80+ point features mark plastic concentration hotspots across all five garbage patches and major coastal river outflows. Points are sourced from oceanographic survey literature and The Ocean Cleanup project data. Each point carries a concentration tier (critical / high / moderate / low) and a plastic density figure in kg/km². Point radius scales with severity; colour uses a red–orange–amber–yellow gradient. Coastal river outflows (Yangtze, Mekong, Ganges, Nile, Niger, and 8 more) are tagged with their source name and typically carry the highest densities, reflecting the fact that ~80% of ocean plastic originates from river systems.

The 2024 4th Global Mass Coral Bleaching Event was declared by NOAA and the International Coral Reef Initiative in March 2024. It is the largest and most severe bleaching event on record, affecting reefs in every major ocean basin. 40 individual reef events are mapped using NOAA Coral Reef Watch alert levels: Watch (yellow) → Warning (amber) → Alert Level 1 (red-orange) → Alert Level 2 (hot pink). Notable events include the Great Barrier Reef at 91% bleached, Florida Keys at 97%, Hawaii at 100% of surveyed reefs, and Flower Garden Banks (Gulf of Mexico) at 96%. A pulse animation (altitude oscillation) visually communicates the urgency. An CRISIS ALERT banner is pinned to the top of the viewport.

The five major ocean gyres that concentrate plastic are visualised as animated dashed great-circle arcs: North Pacific (clockwise), South Pacific (counterclockwise), North Atlantic (clockwise), South Atlantic (counterclockwise), and the Indian Ocean Gyre. Each gyre is decomposed into four directional arc segments (north, east, south, west legs) to trace the rough circular current path. Arcs are rendered using globe.gl's arcsData() API with a 5-second dash animation, colour-coded by ocean basin, and arced to 18% altitude to avoid clipping through the globe surface.

60 points mark ocean areas with record-breaking positive SST anomalies in 2024, based on NOAA's Optimum Interpolation SST v2 and Copernicus Marine Service data. The 2024 anomalies are historically unprecedented: the North Atlantic averaged +3°C above the 1991–2020 baseline for months; the Arctic Ocean reached +4.2°C in some areas; the Gulf of Mexico and Mediterranean both exceeded +2.5°C. Point colour uses a continuous blue → cyan → amber → red thermal ramp keyed to the anomaly magnitude. Point radius also scales with anomaly so the most extreme spots are visually dominant.

Three view modes are available via the left panel: Plastic (garbage patches + hotspot points + gyre arcs), Bleaching (bleaching event points with pulse animation), and Temp Anomaly (SST anomaly heat map). On mode switch, globe.gl's layer data is swapped live — pointsData(), polygonsData(), and arcsData() are all updated simultaneously without remounting the globe. The camera smoothly repositions to the most relevant region for each mode: Pacific-centred for Plastic (the most dramatic garbage patch view), Indo-Pacific for Bleaching (GBR focus), and North Atlantic for Temperature (where the 2024 record anomalies are most pronounced).

All 177 country polygons from the Natural Earth 110m dataset are rendered as a persistent border overlay that stays active across all three view modes. Country borders use a subtle white stroke (18% opacity) by default, brightening on hover (60%) and turning gold on click (90%). Clicking a country flies the camera to the country's centroid, selects it, and opens a stats panel showing the number of plastic pollution zones, coral bleaching events, and SST anomaly readings within the country's bounding region. The country polygon layer is merged with garbage patches in plastic mode — both datasets are combined into a single polygonsData() call with type-discriminated colour/altitude callbacks, since globe.gl exposes a single polygon slot.