A new set of climate visualisations, communicating the long term rise in temperatures for particular locations as a changing set of colours from blue to red. Each stripe represents the temperature of a single year, ordered from the earliest available data to now.
Annual temperatures in central England from 1772-2017
Continue reading Warming stripes
The warming that has occurred over the past 160 years has not been the same everywhere. Certain regions, such as the Arctic, have warmed far more than the Southern Ocean for example. How well do our climate models represent these differences? Continue reading Zonal mean temperature change in observations & models
Just over a year ago I received an email from a colleague I had never met. Jan Fuglestvedt asked whether I had ever made a spiral version of my global temperature graphics. He ended by suggesting that this was ‘just a (crazy) thought’.
But, it was a Friday afternoon – what else was I going to do? Continue reading Spiral birthday
When designing scientific graphics, one key choice is about which colour scale to use (something discussed in several previous posts). The animated graphic below is a simulation of how an image would look to someone who is colour blind (a few percent of men). Continue reading Choose colour scales carefully
Inspired by National Geographic’s climate change evidence graphics, I made my own global temperature polka-dot visualisations.
In the spirit of experimentation, here are three types, successively getting more complicated. After comments from several people I have made both portrait & landscape versions. I would be interested to know which works best for you. Continue reading Global temperature change as polka-dots
Scientists can’t do everything by themselves. We need to engage the millions of citizens who are passionate about knowledge to help solve scientific mysteries and improve our understanding of the world around us.
There are many ways that anyone with a computer can help – volunteer to rescue old weather data or loan your computer’s CPU to simulate the climate, for example.
Those with more technical knowledge might also contribute by communicating climate change in novel ways. Recently, Kevin Pluck (a software engineer) created a global sea ice spiral which gained widespread attention on social media – here he tells Climate Lab Book how he did it. Continue reading Animating global sea ice changes
2016 has been quite a year for the climate. Warmest year ever recorded. Record low sea ice extents at both poles. It has also seen many amazing climate visualisations and animations. I have collected some of my favourites on this storify page, including graphics for temperature, sea ice, pressure observations and Hurricane Matthew.
One of the graphics is shown below, mapping temperature changes from 1850-2016, and including the decadal averages of global temperatures. This graphic has been updated from a previous version.
