The Earth's rotation EKG
The atmosphere spins a little faster or slower than the solid Earth beneath it. Lead I traces its global relative angular momentum, day by day for ten years, against the whole record's range for each date: the seasonal heartbeat, El Niño's surges and La Niña's lulls. Lead II is the pulse that drives it — the mountain torque, pressure pushing on the Rockies, Andes and Himalaya, spiking every few days, and the slower pull of surface friction. Red ticks on the alarm rail mark days that set a new record high for their date.
Global relative atmospheric angular momentum Mr from the aamkit budget of ERA5 (with the GFS real-time extension), 10²⁵ kg m² s⁻¹; torque anomalies in hadleys (10¹⁸ kg m² s⁻²). The envelope is every year of the record for the same calendar date (±3 days).
Space plays or pauses; ← → step; Shift+← → take big steps; hover to read any day. Every frame has its own link (Share), the image downloads at print size, and the whole piece can be embedded anywhere — it updates itself every day.