Both Reuters and 24dash.com report on a British initiative to better visualize the effects of global climate change using Google Earth. The project was launched today by UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown at the Google Zeitgeist conference, and involves two new KML files for Google Earth: One made by the British Antarctic Survey showing the effects of climate change on the ice shelves of Antarctica, and another made by the UK’s Met Office Hadley Centre containing timeline-based overlays and popups showing likely temperature changes.

Neither article manages to link to the layers, nor to the speech by Gordon Brown, so without further ado, all the links you need are right here:

Met Office KML file at Google Outreach

Met Office’s special page on their KML file (which manages not to link to the KML file)

British Antarctic Survey KML file at Google Outreach

BAS’s special page about their KML file

Video of UK PM Brown’s speech today at the Google Zeitgeist conference outside London.

These layers are not available in Google Earth by default (yet?) so you do need to download then via the links above if you want to explore them.