Is Your City Getting Hotter?

I had an idea for how to very simply visualize temperature changes for a given location...

Interpretation

To read that, simply interpret 'dark' as 'colder' and 'orange' as 'hotter'. Looking at the Mexico City plot for example, you get a clear trend towards warmer temperatures in the last 50 years than in the 50 years before that. I ran this for a number of cities, and the results are below...

















That's it. Pretty simple way to see a temperature trend.

Data

I used data from the CRU TS dataset. I simply averaged January 1911, January 1912, etc. to get a January normal, did this for each month, then subtracted it from each month/year combination to see if that month/year combination was hotter or colder than the average. The total range here is 1911 to 2016.


3 comments:

  1. Nice graphs, but...
    Too bad is doesn't go to 2017.
    2010 is a long time ago, temperature wise.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. They're through 2016. Unfortunately, the CRU TS dataset doesn't have 2017's data yet.

      Delete
    2. Ah I thought they ended in 2010.
      Guess I didn't look close enough.
      Thanks
      Happy sailings :)

      Delete