NASA‘s Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio has a beautiful animation of global ocean currents available in HD.
The visualization shows ocean surface currents around the world during the period from June 2005 through December 2007. The visualization does not include a narration or annotations; the goal was to use ocean flow data to create a simple, visceral experience.
The 320 x 180 pixel version is embedded below, and the studio has much higher resolution animations and large TIFF images for download.
[powerpress url=”http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a000000/a003800/a003827/s2011_09_all.m4v”]