Environment/weather Archive:

Dark sky is an interesting short-term (<60 minutes) weather app. The creators interpolate weather radar information and present it based on your GPS location in the form of a smooth animation, along with a precipitation estimate. So instead of knowing that there’s a 50% chance of rain in your region that afternoon (typical weather forecast), you’d know if there was a very likely chance of rain falling on your head in the next 15 minutes. The app is currently in development, and there’s a Kickstarter campaign if you want to contribute to the cause.  There’s also a blog post that explains in more detail how they are using the standard NOAA data.

image

Statistics indicate that more people are born in the fall (in the USA anyway), with the quick explanation being that we have more sex during the winter holidays (9 months earlier).  GE takes a cut at this notion by comparing average temperatures and deviations from the national average birthrate. Statistically, however, using annual data adds enough noise in my mind to make drawing conclusions kind of tough. Anyone want to dig up the monthly data (even for one state) and do a lagged scatter plot? Hmmmm… how would you seasonally adjust this data?

image

(one minor complaint: the 3d scale is interesting for comparing states, but you can’t tell what the values are for any of them because of the angle)

Most of the US is quite warm today. This map is from NOAA which maintains the Environmental Visualization Laboratory, which is chock full of cool maps and data and worth exploring.

 

image

a study conducted in 1983 by the Rural Advancement Foundation International … compared USDA listings of seed varieties sold by commercial U.S. seed houses in 1903 with those in the U.S. National Seed Storage Laboratory in 1983. The survey, which included 66 crops, found that about 93 percent of the varieties had gone extinct.

image

A map of every FEMA emergency since 1953 – you can also filter by disaster type.

image

Here’s a slightly more detailed one, for 1964-2010.

image

Update: and here’s a version from the NYT:

Carstations.com lets you search for local charging sites, add new ones, and read reviews/comments about each.  Personally, I was surprised there were this many out there.

image

The images were obviously chosen to be inflammatory – but the infographic is carefully constructed to do so in a serious way.

image

Amazing video of the wave as it moves across the Pacific.

Want to understand some of the technical aspects of the disaster?

Here’s a NYT interactive explanation of the quake itself:

image

A Washington Post explanation of what’s been happening at the nuclear plants:

image

Interactive graphs of the last 7 days of Japanese earthquakes on the left, historical comparison on the right:

imageimage

And one that really brings home how much bigger this quake was than previous ones:

image

Weatherspark allows you to explore the entire historical record of more than 4,000 weather stations around the globe, using a variety of beautifully interactive graphs. Sites like this make me so click-happy – everything is so smooth and well-executed I can’t stop playing with all the options just to see what happens. Try drilling down from annual to daily data, for example, and watch how everything dynamically rescales. (via)

Here is Washington, DC 2009-11:

image

I have no idea why this wasn’t done as a proper sankey diagram. It might as well just be a table.

image

Charts of carbon dioxide levels evidence

The New York Times has an excellent article and accompanying charts about the scientist who first discovered rising CO2 levels. I came across the article via Barry Ritholtz’s blog, where he delivered this lovely bit of snark:

Please use the comments to demonstrate your own ignorance, lack of scientific knowledge, ability to repeat discredited memes, and lack of respect for empirical data. Also, be sure to create straw men and argue against things I have neither said nor even implied. Any irrelevancies you can mention will also be appreciated. Lastly, kindly forgo all civility in your discourse . . . you are anonymous after all.

 

Kelly O’Day runs a fantastic blog where he takes publicly available datasets and walks you through how to visualize them in excel and R. If you just want to view his personal conclusions on climate change, check out ProcessTrends.

Heat map of world temperature anomolies in 2010

Artic ice levels by type over the long-term

I post a lot of charts establishing that industrialization is causing global warming — it’s only fair to share one that gives an alternative explanation. Of course, it would be more convincing if it included a scale. (here’s a big discussion of it)

image

Some seasonal interactive toys: Why the seasons happen? Why the leaves change color and fall? How to make maple syrup? and a couple of foilage peak maps.

image image

image image

image