Here’s a lovely NASA visualization showing ocean surface currents around the world during the period from June 2005 through Decmeber 2007. You can read details of how it was done and download higher resolution versions at this NASA page.

(via @davpope, Canberra’s great cartoonist, who by the way, every now and then slips puppets into his cartoons. Today’s is a good example)

Update:  This wind map of the US with close to real-time data is also really cool!