Environment/weather - Chart Porn

I think most of us absorbed this in earth science class, but if you need a refresher on how different air layers create different types of precipitation, here it is. (Also, the animations are quite pretty).

Looking around the site it turns out this is just one in a very large series of weather related interactives. Check it out. Some very cool stuff, including my hometown favorite: Lake Effect Snow (Irondequoit, NY).

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Large Earthquakes 1990-2005

In: Environment/weather Science

25 Jan 2010

Magnitude 7.0 and larger per year. More than I would have thought.

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Environment Performance Index

In: Environment/weather

22 Jan 2010

The Environmental Performance Index – developed by scientists at Columbia and Yale – aims to aggregate various countries’ performance across environmental indicators, and give each an overall mark out of 100.

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New Haiti Satellite Pictures

In: Culture Environment/weather Maps

20 Jan 2010

Google has released a series of higher quality satellite pictures taken on Jan 17th. Crazy resolution of the destruction.

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Understanding Haiti’s Earthquakes

In: Environment/weather Maps Science

20 Jan 2010

Thanks to Sean Speer for pointing it out.

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Trends

In: Culture Environment/weather Global Economy Politics Science

19 Jan 2010

Nowandnext.com has a number of interesting timelines. Thanks to Sam Freund for pointing them out!

Trends and Technology (2010-2050):

Innovations (1920-2050):

Extinction timeline (1950-2050):

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Haiti

In: Culture Environment/weather Global Economy Maps Science Source: NYT Source: USA Today Source: Washington Post Source: WSJ

15 Jan 2010

Crazy amount of damage. and Haiti wasn’t in very good shape to start with. I’ll keep adding finds to this same post as I come across them.

I kept hearing that the shipping port was out of commission and was wondering what exactly that meant. Here it is. (via Washington Post print edition)

Damage zone and location of aftershocks :

Faultlines, cities, population density, shaking:

Annotated map:

Zoomable satellite map of Port-au-Prince from 10:30 Wednesday:

NYT side-by-side before and after satellite pictures:

Map of logistical challenges hampering relief efforts:

Earthquake primer with details on Haiti’s plates:

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Auto Charts

In: Environment/weather Innovative Science

12 Jan 2010

The UNEP GEO Data Portal has recently automated some chart production with a custom Illustrator script, for cross-country comparison purposes. The below example is for total CO2 emissions vs per capita. While I really like the waveform-type display aesthetically, I’m not sure of it’s analytical value compared to a bar chart.

It works a little better here (Total Final Energy Consumption):

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Climate Wizard

In: Environment/weather Interactive Maps Science

6 Jan 2010

Take a look at temperature changes over the past 50 years, then select from several different models to simulate changes for the next 100. Produced by the Nature Conservancy, University of Washington, and University of Southern Mississippi, the amount of detail and explanation is welcome versus some of the more popular projection maps out there. (via)