A few days ago, the UK’s Met Office (short for Meteorological Office) released a large data subset containing a record of global temperatures. The subset is one of the global temperature records that have underpinned IPCC assessment reports and numerous scientific studies. The data show monthly average temperature values for over 1,500 land stations.
Both Manuel Lima (of Visual Complexity) and Jer Thorp (of blprnt.com) have called for the “data community” to step in and use this opportunity to create meaningful data representations. Accordingly, an open online forum titled “#ClimateData“, has been created where data visualization enthusiasts are invited to participate in a constructive dialogue towards this goal.
In the meantime, some early visualization results have already trickled in.
– Information is Beautiful (of the book The Visual Miscellaneum) has developed a very detailed infographic depicting the different arguments in the ongoing debate between the Global Warming Sceptics versus the Scientific Consensus.
– Flink Labs mapped the temperature readings of more than 200 years on an animated 3D globe.
– Lastly, blprnt has created 12 monthly data representations, visualizing all 1,670,354 released Met Office Climate records.
Is this a worthwhile initiative? Are there more visualizations around? Are you planning to make one? Let us know in the comments below!