Environment/weather Archive:
2000 years of Global Temperatures
15 May 2013Interesting scientific work, building on prior studies from across the world. Rather than get into the findings in detail I refer you to the NYT article and a very detail FAQ at the authors’ website)
Satellite GIFs
15 May 2013It’s interesting how popular animated gifs have become again. I guess that even with high speed internet people are a little fed up with player load times and lags. Here GIFs are used to show time lapse satellite images of mankind’s impact on the earth. (google earth link)
Climate Change
13 Mar 2013Recent studies add to the evidence that we are changing the world:
If you want to see what “climate change” really means, as in what will be changing where, check out the 2013 National Climate Assessment report. It’s fantastic, and chuck full of visualizations:
One side effect: More shipping in the Arctic:
More Hotness
10 Jan 2013Apparently the forecasts for the current heat-wave in Australia are so hot that the Bureau of Meteorology had to add two new colors to it’s forecasting map:
And here is the NYT version of of the 2012 temperature map. I like the city histograms at the bottom.
2012 Hottest Year on Record
9 Jan 2013It didn’t just FEEL hot. It WAS hot.
US Weather Disasters (1980-2011)
19 Nov 2012Cool graphic from National Geographic:
Hurricanes, Earthquakes, and Fires
1 Nov 2012Hurricanes since 1851:
Earthquakes since 1898:
Fires 2001-2012:
More Drought
In: Environment/weather Graphic Design (bad) Interactive Maps
30 Jul 2012Four maps (one of them with interactive annotations), a bar chart, and a related article – and none of them explain how “drought” is defined. What is the difference between severe, extreme, and exceptional drought? They all sound terrible.
In search of context, I went to the Drought Monitor site, where I found more cool looking maps and animated gifs…
… and finally a “what is drought” section, and a link to a comparison of major drought indices and indicators (none of which explained how the categories used by the drought monitor are defined), and a link back to monitor site. At which point I gave up.
Water Consumption Sankey
11 Jun 2012It’s nice to see a sankey diagram be used for something besides energy. As some have noted, however, this should have been complemented with population adjusted stats.
Overfishing
11 Jun 2012http://flowingdata.com/2012/06/06/overfishing-visually-explained/A well narrated video-graphic. (via FlowingData)
Why Do I Feel Thirsty?
8 May 2012This visualization shows the size of a sphere that would contain all of the Earth’s water compared to the size of the Earth. Yikes! That’s a lot of dirt and rock!
Thanks to D. Cramer for emailing me the link!
Tornados (1950-2011)
4 Apr 2012Explore tornados by location, size, cost and other factors.
Tableau version: 
Tornado History Project’s version:
and NOAA has a number of beautiful tornado and storm visualizations on it’s site (from which the other two get their data): 
What is Chart Porn?
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