With 2018 coming towards an end, the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) released their provisional State of the Climate report. The WMO asked whether Climate Lab Book could provide some updated graphics, also reproduced here.
Warming stripes for 1850-2018 using the WMO annual global temperature dataset. Continue reading 2018 visualisation update
Following the ‘warming stripes‘ graphics for different locations around the world, this post focusses on the UK. The Met Office makes easily available long-running climate data from a small number of locations*. The visualisations below show the common changes in temperature and rainfall for the five longest climate monitoring stations in that set – Stornoway, Armagh, Durham, Sheffield & Oxford – which all have data for 1883-2017. Continue reading Climate stripes for the UK
Climate change is a complex global issue, requiring simple communication about its effects at the local scale. This set of visualisations highlight how we have witnessed temperatures change across the globe over the past century or more. The colour of each stripe represents the temperature of a single year, ordered from the earliest available data at each location to now. All other superfluous information is removed so that the changes in temperature are seen simply and undeniably.
Annual global temperatures from 1850-2017
The colour scale represents the change in global temperatures covering 1.35°C [data]
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