Google Earth Timelapse shows us how our planet has changed since 1984

Now, Google has updated Timelapse with the four past years of imagery — it now spans the period from 1984 to 2016 — and "petabytes" of new data, which includes new, sharper images. 

The imagery gives you quite an amazing view into various processes that change the shape of our planet — deforestation, glacial motion, urbanization, war. Google offers a curated selection of interesting locations and events, such as the reconstruction of the Oakland Bay Bridge in San Francisco or the movement of the Hourihan Glacier in Antarctica. 

San Francisco - Oakland Bay Bridge reconstruction

IMAGE: GOOGLE/LANDSAT/COPERNICUS

You can, however, point the map to any location in the world and see how it changed over time (though the imagery might not be of the same quality everywhere). 

See a YouTube playlist with all of Google's curated Timelapse examples, below. 

Google has shared an interesting insight on how Timelapse was created on its blog — it took three quadrillion pixels and more than 5,000,000 satellite images to do it. Check out the details here.