WebGCM

A global climate model that runs in your browser.

The simulated Earth seen from space, with clouds, sea ice and the day–night terminator

Climate model

A global climate model running live: a hydrostatic atmosphere with 27 levels on a geodesic C-grid, moist convection and clouds, a wind-driven two-layer ocean, sea ice, snow and soil on real continents with terrain. Every kernel runs on the graphics card through WebGPU. It picks up from a six-year spin-up at 64 subdivisions, about 41,000 cells 110 km across, where you can colour the globe by wind, temperature, pressure, rain, clouds, ice or ocean currents, follow the wind with particles, watch the planet from space, and save snapshots.

Best in a browser with WebGPU (Chrome, Edge or Safari 26). Without it the model falls back to a slower CPU engine. The starting state is a 50 MB download.

Open the climate model →
Wind speed at 250 hPa on the globe, with the jet streams as bright bandsJet streams: wind speed at 250 hPa, with wind vectors and the graticule A deep low with 1 hPa isobars over the Drake PassageSea-level pressure with 1 hPa isobars over the Drake Passage Sea surface temperature around the Caribbean with the current particles streaked over a second of motionSea surface temperature with the current animation over the Caribbean and the Gulf Stream, a second of motion in one frame
A geodesic polyhedron shaded by procedural terrain

Geodesic grid

Where the project began, and where its repository got its name: an icosahedron subdivided into 100,002 hexagonal cells, twelve of them pentagons, shaded by procedural terrain and rendered with Three.js. Drag to rotate, scroll to zoom.

View the grid →
A 500 hPa chart with geopotential height contours over wind speed

Synoptic charts

Weather-map plots drawn from saved model states: geopotential height contours and wind speed at standard pressure levels on an Equal Earth projection, downloadable as SVG or PNG.

Draw a chart →