Weather Visualization: Fast & Slow

NASA has done a wonderful visualization of the 2005 hurricane season showing the named storms from June 1 up until Oct 17 (missing Alpha and only getting the start of Wilma).

It reveals how weather patterns (fast variables) are structured by ocean temperatures (a slower variable) along with the storm paths.

Identifying changes in slow variables is an important part of managing for resilience. For a quick introduction to this idea see Lance Gunderson’s short 1999 article Resilient management: comments on “Ecological and social dynamics in simple models of ecosystem management”.

Related posts:

1. Slow variables that shape bushfire resilience
2. Visualization – Processing – a new tool
3. Slow ecological art
4. Visualization of Complex Networks
5. Revenge of the Slow