Arctic DEM

Here are some useful links for Arctic DEM:

• ArcticDEM Index & Data Download
• Arctic DEM Explorer (Esri)
• Files and Tiles

https://www.solar-estimate.org/

https://www.solar-estimate.org/ is clearly commercial, but it would be interesting to compare the results with the good old PVWatts Calculator by the NREL.

R, RStudio, RStudio Cloud

R is a programming language or a software environment for statistical analysis, scientific computing, and graphics. RStudio is an IDE for using R. In other words: You can use R without using RStudio, but you can't use RStudio without using R. Finally, there is RStudio Cloud.

Now, just be aware: R is open-source, but RStudio is not.

Tracking Amazon Deforestation from Above

https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/145988/tracking-amazon-deforestation-from-above

Tracking Amazon Deforestation from Above

Tracking Amazon Deforestation from Above has some great animated GIFs and charts. Here's one of them:

Climate Change In the American Mind

Climate Change In the American Mind is a great resource.

1. Great reports, for example Climate Change In the American Mind (November 2019).
2. Global Warming’s Six America’s Screening Tools = the survey and instructions.
3. The CCAM Explorer: interactive charts (using Tableau), survey questions, and data.

Green Mountain Maps

Nothing really 'fancy' here, but Green Mountain Maps is a nice use of open-source data for a specific purpose (here tree skiing in Vermont).

Colors

Here are two great apps for better color choices:

• Happy Hues (works great for website colors)
• Viz Palette

Of course there's always the good old ColorBrewer 2.0.

McKibben (after Humboldt)

“We can register what is happening with satellites and scientific instruments, but can we register it in our imaginations, the most sensitive of all our devices?”

Bill McKibben (http://grist.org/article/mckibben-imagine/)

Skimo in Ski Resorts

Skimo in Ski Resorts is a simple Google My Maps.

Weather Time Machine

The title is somewhat misleading, but the Weather Time Machine is a great data viz / story map of how we can use old ships logs to estimate past weather and climate.

The 2100 Project

These maps are pretty cool: The 2100 Project: An Atlas for the Green New Deal. Here's one example:

Meanders and Oxbows

Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta

The Teacher-Friendly Guide™ to Climate Change

The Teacher-Friendly Guide™ to Climate Change looks like a great resource.

Tidal Energy

Awning Design

Here's a nifty little modeling tool for your passive solar house: Awning Design (from Science Pickle, just scroll-down).

The Great Acceleration

How to Build a Better City

Great examples of 'scrolly-telling':

• The Deep Sea
• Journey to the center of the Earth
• The Size of Space
• Timeline Of Earth
• Scroll NYC

ERA5 Explorer

The ERA5 Explorer is pretty fancy: click on the map and get a bunch of interactive charts. 

Counting Zebras

This is a nice explanation of pattern-based AI.

DataWrapper

DataWrapper recently changed their pricing structure and their new free plan is really appealing now: unlimited charts, export as PNGs, and collaboration. Nice.

Google Earth Projects

I almost forgot about this, but Google Earth Projects are a quick and easy way to fly around the earth from place-to-place. More here or have a look at the Help Content or watch below.

NetCDF into ArcGIS Pro

The lesson Explore Future Climate Projections is pretty good and nicely-shows how to import and map NetCDF files (and convert to tables).

Inquiry

En-ROADS and C-ROADS

En-ROADS and C-ROADS are both climate change policy/solutions simulators - great tools for teaching and learning.

Common Online Data Analysis Platform (CODAP)

This looks great: Common Online Data Analysis Platform (CODAP): a web-based and free data exploration and analysis tool.

Using R with 7th-grade science students

Using R with 7th-grade science students does not seem like a good idea to me (based on my experience teaching undergraduates at a public 4-year college in Massachusetts), but take a look yourself.

Function over Form

Superfund Sites and Climate Change

Superfund Sites and Climate Change (from the GAO!) is just a simple interactive web map and the data are provided as an MS Excel spreadsheet.

Docker, Binder, Colaboratory, and more

If you are interested in any of these: Make code accessible with these cloud services (Nature 7 November 2019). Try Binder @ https://mybinder.org/.

Daylight = f (latitude, day of year)

More here on Flowing Data.

Making Sense of Amazon Deforestation Patterns

Making Sense of Amazon Deforestation Patterns shows some great examples of - well - spatial patterns of deforestation in the Amazon as seen from satellite images.

Mercator, it's not hip to be square

Good stuff from Ken Field: Mercator, it's not hip to be square. Quote: "Simply put, Web Mercator kills thematic maps." Perfect example: 2019 Canadian election maps.

Humboldt, Chimborazo, and the Tableau Physique

Meanders

The Many Meanders of the Juruá (NASA) is just a beautiful satellite image of a meandering river.

Infrared Radiation

The first 15 seconds (and the rest) show a nice example of infrared vs. visible radiation (aka light).

SLR Maps

There are a bunch of web-based interactive tools to visualize the impacts of sea-level rise - here are a few of them:

• Sea Level Rise and Coastal Flood Web Tools Comparison Matrix - National (by Climate Central)
• Coastal Risk Screening Tool - Global (by Climate Central)

Python and ArcGIS Pro

Nice 4-part series about using Python in ArcGIS Pro by Olivia Iannone (Esri). Plus good courses offered by Esri:

1. https://www.esri.com/training/catalog/57630436851d31e02a43f13c/python-for-everyone/
2. https://www.esri.com/training/catalog/5763042c851d31e02a43ed84/python-scripting-for-geoprocessing-workflows/

Street Orientation

This is not all that new, but interesting: Road Orientations Map. Read more about it here: Visualizing street orientations on an interactive map. I always find these 'gridded' cities a little weird (being from Europe), especially those 'forcing' the grid over significant topography (e.g. San Francisco).

ParkScore and ParkView

How does your community 'score' in terms of access to public parks? Have a look at ParkScore and ParkView (by The Trust For Public Land).

Overview

Overview is great and you can search and access the high-resolution images either via the index or the map.

City Streets

The direction of streets in cities can tell you a lot about its geography and history: Urban Street Network Orientation is a nice data viz of that.

MS Excel and Google Sheets on Steroids!

I admit: I use MS Excel a lot and I'm still amazed how much more there is 'under the hood' in terms of functions, analysis options, and charting tricks - here are a few good ones I came across recently:

• An Empty Bar (Ann K. Emery)
• Removing the Double Y Axis (Ann K. Emery)
• VLookup (Ann K. Emery)
• From Data to Charts in 5 minutes (Ann K. Emery)
• Excel Elbow Grease (great tricks by Ann K. Emery)
• Muted Grid Lines and Area Charts (Ann K. Emery)
• Number Formatting / Conditional Formatting (Ann K. Emery)
• Formatting Months, Days, and Years in Excel (Ann K. Emery)
• Label Axis and/or Data? (Ann K. Emery)
• Formatting Names (Ann K. Emery)
• Sorting and Filtering your Spreadsheets (Ann K. Emery)
• Place Labels Directly On Line Graph (Ann K. Emery)
• Custom Color Codes in Excel (Anne K. Emery)
• Categorize values with =IF() and =VLOOKUP() (Ann K. Emery)
• How to Use Vlookup in MS Excel (Anne K. Emery)
• How to match data with VLOOKUP in Excel & Google Sheets (Lisa Charlotte Muth)
• Sparklines and Data Bars (Ann K. Emery)
• Add Dotted Lines to Line Graphs (Ann K. Emery)
• Direct Labeling in Excel (Stephanie Evergreen)
• Make a Pictogram in Excel (Stephanie Evergreen)
• Fast Small Multiple Graphs (Stephanie Evergreen)
• Easy Dot Plots in MS Excel (Stephanie Evergreen)
• Dumbbell Dot Plots in MS Excel I (Stephanie Evergreen)
• Dumbbell Dot Plots in MS Excel II (Stephanie Evergreen)
• Dumbbell Dot Plots Way Easier (Stephanie Evergreen)
• Make a Slopegraph in Excel (Stephanie Evergreen)
• How to make a scatter plot in Excel (Storytelling with Data)
• Adding a Benchmark Line (Stephanie Evergreen)
• Customizing Colors (Stephanie Evergreen)
• Showing Standard Deviation (Stephanie Evergreen)
• Confidence Intervals to Dot Plots (Stephanie Evergreen)
• Margin of Error in Excel with “Slider Plots” (Andrew Forsman)
• Directly Labeling Excel Charts (Jonathan Schwabish)
• Edit a ledgend in Excel (Storytelling with Data)
• Swimmer Plots (Jon Peltier)
• Pivot Tables (Jon Peltier)
• Interactive data dashboards (Ben Collins)
• Supercategory axis labels (Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic)
• Plotting value within range (Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic)
• Embedding a vertical reference line in Excel (Elizabeth Ricks)
• How to do it in Excel: a shaded range (Elizabeth Ricks)
• How to do it in Excel: adding data labels (Elizabeth Ricks)
• Data prep for MS Excel / Google Sheets (Chartable)
• Extract Text from Data Columns (Chartable)
• Create a dot plot (Storytelling with Data)
• Save As Template (Stephanie Evergreen)

BillionPixel

BillionPixel is 'just' a mosaic of pictures, but super-cool: here's Shanghai.

Mer de Glace: 1919 to 2019

More details here: Misusing the Georeference Tool for Historic Image Alignment

https://www.esri.com/arcgis-blog/products/arcgis-pro/mapping/misusing-the-georeference-tool-for-historic-image-alignment/

2019 Ozone Hole is the Smallest on Record

Good news: 2019 Ozone Hole is the Smallest on Record

The Invisible Gorilla

The Invisible Gorilla is noting new, but still very interesting.

Massive Solar Plant

That's the scale we need: 14 square miles, 1.8 GW in Egypt: Catching Rays in the Desert

Atmosphere, Oceans, and Continents

The EarthWindMap (https://earth.nullschool.net/) is awesome, especially the ability to visualize different atmospheric levels and weather variables. Now we have KCM-earth to compare ocean and wind currents between today and the Early Cretaceous.

1-Minute Map Hacks

John Nelson put together a series of quick videos called 1-Minute Map Hacks with some neat tips and tricks. My favs: 1) How to Fix Overly-Busy Coastlines, 2) How to Tweak a Projection, and 3) Georeference Images.

How years compare with the 20th Century average

I really like this animated chart: How years compare with the 20th Century average. It would be great as a Youtube video or animated GIF.

Remote Pixel

Remote Pixel lets you view Landsat and Sentinel-2 images, perform basic analysis, and download the raw tif files. All that in a simple interface!

Not Statistically-Significant

Mapping Photographs

This is nothing new, but here are a few nice examples:

• Indianapolis (1907)
• Detroit (1908)
• Minneapolis (1907)

Here's the How-To from Maps Mania.

Excel vs. Tableau vs. R

https://stephanieevergreen.com/excel-vs-tableau-vs-r/

Based On Science

Based on Science = Answers to Everyday Science and Health Questions from the National Academies

SHENOVA

Need a holiday gift? Try SHENOVA for wearable STEMPOWERMENT!

Paris to Pittsburgh

Excellent film!

Inclusive Teaching

This is a pretty good read: Want to Reach All of Your Students? Here’s How to Make Your Teaching More Inclusive. The authors emphasize the importance of structure and offer a nice analogy: "For example, say you threw a party to bring together your single friends. They are far more likely to meet a variety of people if you plan icebreakers and activities (high structure) than if you simply provide space and time for the event (low structure). The same is true of learning: More structure means more students will engage and learn from you and their peers...the extroverted party lover is going to mingle and meet people in either a low- or high-structure event. But the introverts (like us) who aren’t comfortable with random mingling won’t. Helping those who need the structure doesn’t harm those who don’t."

Air Bubbles in Ice

Great photograph by @ lakewoodhiker:

https://twitter.com/lakewoodhiker/status/1173978513247879168

IBM Watson Studio Desktop

IBM Watson Studio Desktop does it all: data viz, Big Data, AI, gives back rubs, etc. Way too expensive @ $199/month, but there is a free student edition.

Extreme climate change has arrived in America

2°C: BEYOND THE LIMIT is a nice scroll-able data viz from the Washington Post. Be patient, keep on scrolling, and you will eventually find an interactive chart showing temperature changes between 1895 and 2018 for a U.S. County of your choice.

SLR & Coastal National Parks

SLR & Coastal National Parks is well-done.

LabScrum

Scrum for academic labs = LabScrum. I like it: sprints, stand-ups, etc. could make the way we operate so much more effective. Nice article in Nature: A project-management tool from the tech industry could benefit your lab.

The Malaspina Glacier

Malaspina on the Move is a great animated GIF.

Mercator (again)

Mercator - It's  flat, flat world is a nice immersive story map that nicely describes and illustrates the history of this map and map projection.

Dorian and Germany

Snow Depth Mapping using SfM and more

Goetz and Brenning (2019): Quantifying uncertainties in snow depth mapping from structure from motion photogrammetry in an alpine area. Water Resources Research, doi: 10.1029/2019WR025251.

Filhol et al. (2019): Time-lapse Photogrammetry of Distributed Snowdepth During Snowmelt. Water Resources Research, doi: 10.1029/2018WR024530. Ground-based, oblique with 3 cameras - easy in concept, but the details are complex. They make a good point: usually we either have high-frequency time series from point measurements or sporadic spatial data from satellites, UAVs, etc. Their approach tries to bridge that gap.

The Secret Global Sewer System

More About Colors

Your Friendly Guide to Colors in Data Visualisation is a nice compilation with some nice resources, for example CARTOColors and Colorpicker.

uHandy Mobile Microscope Duet

The uHandy Mobile Microscope Duet looks really fun and a great way to use a smartphone for science teaching. It's a little pricey at $129.95, but there's the uHandy Lite for $34.95. Read a review here.

Google Earth Studio

Google Earth Studio is an animation tool for Google Earth’s satellite and 3D imagery. Sounds fun!

How long is a day?

Great stuff as usual from Minute Physics and and now Minute Labs: What is a day?

Slavery in the USA

Great story map from USA Today and a nice examples of the so-called digital humanities (DH): Slavery's explosive growth, in charts: How '20 and odd' became millions.

Anchor Phenomena in Science Teaching

Anchor phenomena is one of the buzz words today in STEM teaching and learning: something that connects a specific activity or learning sequence to something that students find compelling. Here are some resources:

• Tools for Ambitious Science Teaching
• Qualities of a Good Anchor Phenomenon for a Coherent Sequence of Science Lessons
• Selecting Anchoring Phenomena for Equitable 3D Teaching

Cyber Agriculture

Cyber Agriculture: read more about it The future of agriculture is computerized (MIT News). That's all fine - now please show me that this works for growing something useful such as potatoes, cassava, tubers, etc. - then I may get excited.

Educational Attainment in America

Educational Attainment in America is a nice dot map. I find these maps a little tricky to interpret due to the uneven distribution of population across the country. This one, however, has a nice feature in that you can generate a simple bar chart for the current view.

New Census Data Website

Give it a try: https://data.census.gov/cedsci/

Julia

Julia = the speed of C with the convenience of Python. If you don't know what any of this means...have a look at Julia: come for the syntax, stay for the speed, download Julia, and start your coding with Juno.

Science & Military

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02389-8

Machine Learning / AI

Or as we also call it: voodoo. Something that some people do somehow using this thing called Big Data that is out there, but nobody can see (= dark matter). Here are a couple of days to do this voodoo yourself and makes a lot of money.

• Ludwig (by Uber) available on GitHub.
• Northstar by DSAIL at MIT. 

Wind Speed, Wind Direction, and Temperature

Wind Speed, Wind Direction, and Temperature across the USA in one animation? Have a look at US Wind Patterns. Cool? Yes! Useful? No.

Mapping Segregation

Nothing new here, but two nice interactive visualizations using two different approaches: one is a classic dot map, the other a census polygon map.

• Segregation Map (Washington Post)
• Segregated, really segregated, or ultra-segregated?

Better Research Posters

Great stuff here from Mike Morrison and this really highlights the issues we have in scientific communication in-general.

• To Save The Science Poster, Researchers Want To Kill It And Start Over
• #betterposter Template
• Example 1
• Example 2

The Top 12 Landsat Image Sites

The Top 12 Landsat Image Sites is pretty obvious. I'm still using the good old USGS GloVIS viewer (works great, also for the Sentinel images).

Beer in MA

Runways and Wind

Obviously, runways are oriented to match the most common wind direction, so therefore a map of runways should be able to tell us a lot about the most common wind direction. Have a look at Trails of the Wind for just that.

Explore the Solar System with Tabletop Whale

Her work is just incredible: Tabletop Whale. My recent favs:

• Animated Jupiter
• Animated Earth
• The Geology of Mars

Dynamic Mapping with MS Excel?

Perhaps not the most efficient way to map, but fun: I Made a Dynamic Hurricane Map with Excel!

The Daily Selfie

Pretty cool animation showing how Planet's fleet of satellites image the entire Earth, daily.

Poverty USA

Poverty USA offers demographic data viz at the US county level for different years in a nice and clean interface. Now, what would be better:

1. Add the US cities level.
2. Add a comparison function that let's you compare two cities or counties.
3. Add a image export.
4. Add a data export.

Extreme Climate!

Mapping American Artists

Here is a nice example of DH by the NYT.

The Humanitarian Data Exchange

The Humanitarian Data Exchange looks great and Joe Kerski tried it here.

The Cruel Irony Of Air Conditioning

Why the Future of Cars is Electric

Let's Talk Phosphorus!

#ShowYourStripes

• #ShowYourStripes is pretty cool: simple and elegant!
• Similar, but works at the US Counties level: Annual United States Climate Stripes: Temperature and Precipitation

Massachusetts

So true!

What's R?

Here's what Roger Peng had to say in a keynote address (text version):

The National Map

The National Map (USGS) is one of the most underrated sources of GIS (and other) data, for example the USGS 3D Elevation Program data.

WorldClim Data

WorldClim is a set of global climate layers (gridded climate data) with a spatial resolution of about 1 km2. These data can be used for mapping and spatial modeling. Best of all: you can get past, current, and future climates. And: all as geoTIFFs and not some cryptic NetCDF...

To Code or to Excel?

https://xkcd.com/2180/

Timeline JS and Storyline JS

Storyline JS is a fun tool: take a simple Google Sheet with time series data and annotate dates/times of interest with interactive cards. That's it. Simple.

Timeline JS is similar, but offers more features with embedded media to illustrate events over time.

Both are in a sense story maps, but here the main organizational frame is time, not space.

First You Make the Maps

First You Make the Maps is just awesome - a great visual narrative of how maps enabled and shaped global trade using an immersive Story Map.

A Slusher!

Nice footage of a little runnel / slushflow in Tuckerman Ravine on 4 June 2019.

The Geographies of Innovation

Seen on Maps Mania: The Geographies of Innovation

And, I agree: these maps are beautiful, artistic, and technologically very high-end. But, they are also confusing, too dense, and just 'too much' data viz wizardry. Thus, they fail that what is perhaps the most-important reason for data viz: telling a data-driven story that your audience finds compelling enough to take action.

Travel Times to US State Capitals

I guess it all started with Rome and now they have extended the basic analysis to US state capitals:

• Read the details
• Interactive map

More Digital Humanities and Geography

Two more great examples:

• D-Day Journeys (details)
• Mapping Bob Ross (details)

Geography and Poetry

Or: poetry about place and places - a great DH example.

• Places of Poetry
• Poems about Places: The Poetry Atlas

The JPEG

Yep, the JPEG: Read Unraveling the JPEG and you will learn more than you ever wanted about this image file format - excellent!

Microsoft Power BI

Microsoft Power BI looks interesting - a fancy 'enterprise' version of Tableau maybe (dashboards are certainly hip these days).

Blockly

Blockly is a visual programming 'interface' that uses interlocking blocks to create a programming 'workflow'. Then, on the right, the underlying code is displayed in JavaScript, Python, etc. Looks interesting - I wish they would provide clearer instructions (= without the jargon) on how to install and setup Blockly.

Deforestation: Guatemala vs. Belize

Pretty clear differences in environmental policies highlighted here in Google Earth Timelapse along the Guatemala / Belize border.

Creative Climate Communication: 4 Scientists, 4 Approaches

Flourish

Flourish is great: a web-based interactive data viz tool with all the usual features - all very similar to the other players in this field such as Datawrapper. The free public version is great, anything beyond that is outside of what a 'normal' person in higher education would want to pay.

RAWGraphs

RAWGraphs is am open-source web-based data viz environment built on d3.js.

Collector for ArcGIS: Capture High-Accuracy Data

China's Belt and Road Initiative

China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is a massive infrastructure project (aka. the New Silk Road). The goal is obvious: extend China's power by facilitating trade and opening new markets for goods and services - westward and southward.

Here's the catch: these projects are funded via loans from China to the participating countries. And of course China expects a return on that investment. If the countries cannot repay the loan, then China takes over the project (e.g. Sri Lanka's Hambantota port) and thus establishes its presence. Thus, some view the BRI as a 'Trojan Horse' to dominate the rest of Asia.

There is also a scientific side of the BRI as described here: How China is redrawing the map of world science (Nature, 2 May 2019).

Tinkercad

Tinkercad is a free 3-D design web-based CAD software: design, then export your design for 3-D printing. Not sure how it differs from SketchUp, but both are ultimately linked to large commercial companies.

How Was the Grand Canyon Formed?

How Does Your State Make Electricity?

How Does Your State Make Electricity? is a great data viz presentation from the NYT. However, I'm not a fan of these 'turd charts' as they imply that huge changes have occurred when the 'turds' cross each other.

Chart chooser based on data format

A Chart chooser based on data format seems like an obvious idea (seen on FlowingData based on Multiple views on how to choose a visualization). Here's the Chart Chooser.

Lithium Harvesting at Salar de Uyuni

That's it: the new 'White Gold' for Bolivia: Lithium Harvesting at Salar de Uyuni

The State of Glaciers in 2019

Two recent papers presented global assessments of glaciers outside of the two major ice sheets:

1. Farinotti et al. (March 2019, Nature Geoscience)
2. Zemp et al. (18 April 2019, Nature)

In summary: the about 215,000 glaciers (outside of the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets) represent about 0.4 m SLR equivalent and glacier mass balances are negative everywhere. Caveat: of these about 215,000 glaciers we only have direct mass balance observations from 450, ice thickness data from about 1,000, and geodetic mass balance data from 19,130.

I'm not so sure that these specific numbers are all that useful - here's the summary: there are a lot of glaciers on Earth and they are all losing mass due to global warming. The details are interesting, but not all that important.

Zemp et al. (2019, Figure 2)

Urban CO2 Data

Here you can have it all: an interactive map, the data as text files, and the gridded model output as GeoTIFFs: Global Gridded Model of Carbon Footprints (GGMCF)

Glaciers and Climate

A few resources that I came across recently:

• Glaciers & Ice Ages (nice pictures and diagrams, useful as teaching materials).
• How Do Glaciers Move? by It's Okay To Be Smart.
• 97% of Climate Scientists Really Do Agree by It's Okay To Be Smart.

AT Map

Totally impractical, but cool: Appalachian Trail Map by John Nelson.

Why Do Compressed Air Cans Get Cold?

Good stuff here that is applicable to what happens in the atmosphere.

Renewables since 2010

This is nicely-done: explore by region, country, and technology: How much electricity is generated from renewable energy sources?

Wave Power

Bears Ears National Monument

Impressive immersive 'scrolly-style story map about the Bears Ears National Monument from the Washington Post.

https://jeopardylabs.com/

https://jeopardylabs.com/ is great as a non-stakes formative assessment.

Global Warming Changes in Annual Average Temperature Distribution

The Story of The US Told In 141 Maps

The Story of The US (March 1789 to August 1959) Told In 141 Maps is great - have a look!

Citizen Science

It's been a while since I read anything about that and so the paper Engagement in science through citizen science: Moving beyond data collection (Phillips et al. 2018) was interesting: yes, tell me how we can move beyond just running around outside to collect data. That's fun and important, but that's not science.

Well, turns out that we may want the CS participants to get involved more in the data analysis and project design, but they don't. They are happy collecting data and leaving the rest to the scientists.

Well, that makes sense - we simply cannot engage with everything. There are some things that we just want to do and support but not think about too deeply.

Firefox Send

Firefox Send is a simple and easy way to share files that are too large for Email attachments. I really would like to use Firefox...but Google Drive/Docs works so much better in Google and my Outlook for Web works so much better in IE.

Need a better bar chart?

Take a look at ways to make a better bar chart @ the Bar Chart Menu.

FastCharts

Add your data and chart it using FastCharts. That's it. Quick and easy and not many options for customization. Download as PNG or SVG.

The Problem With Concrete

Landslide / Earthflow

Permafrost and Methane

The positive feedback associated with methane release from melting permafrost may very well be the greatest threat that nobody talks about. The South China Morning Post put together a nice scroll-able Story Map in What is permafrost and why might it be the climate change time bomb? with excellent maps and visuals.

Mapping Power Plants

Maps Mania has compiled four interactive websites that map - well - power plants: Mapping the World's Power Plants. Here's one of them:

Visual Vocabulary

These posters/compilations are useful:

• Visual Vocabulary - Vega Edition
• Financial Times Visual Vocabulary

The Lifespan of News Stories

The Lifespan of News Stories is pretty cool with an animated timeline of 2018 and a matching interactive map below. I wonder if one could 'classify' the shapes of these 'curves' and create a model to predict the level, intensity, and duration (= lifespan) of future news stories.

The Climate Reanalyzer

Good stuff from UMaine: The Climate Reanalyzer, especially their section on Today's Weather Maps.

Earth's Topography

Earth Elevation is a nice data-viz, slicing the Earth's topography and bathymetry along lines of latitude.

GIS in R

There's a (new) MOOC for that: Introduction to GIS in R

What We Could Do.

Great data viz from the NYT - what we could do in terms of emission reductions if we would adopt policies in-place around the world: How to Cut U.S. Emissions Faster? Do What These Countries Are Doing.

Human Terrain

This is awesome: Human Terrain

Cyber GIScience Literacy

Yep, that's a term - read more about it here: Cyber Literacy for GIScience: Toward Formalizing Geospatial Computing Education (Shook et al., 2019).

Interesting read, but it is difficult not to get a little disillusioned when you are actually teaching Introduction to GIS to undergraduates in 2019. I like the inspirational ideas, but let's start with some basic computer literacy (where's my file and why does it matter?) - that's especially a problem for Mac users.

https://blogs.agu.org/onthejob/files/2019/02/Forrest-blog.jpg

Katharine Hayhoe @ TEDWoman 2018

Katharine Hayhoe is getting a little overexposed these days, but her message is important in this TED Talk. Even better is her Global Weirding with Katharine Hayhoe YouTube channel.

3D Printing

Noting new to see here, but some useful links related to 3D printing:

• https://www.myminifactory.com/
• https://www.thingiverse.com/
• OpenSCAD  (3D modelling software)

Shifting Cities Due To Climate Change

Simple and powerful!

• What will summers be like in 2100 for 1001 cities in the USA?
• What will winters be like in 2100 for 1001 cities in the USA?
• What will summers be like in 2100 for cities around the world?
• What will climate feel like in 60 years? (paper)

Why Earthquakes Are So Hard To Predict

Carbon Dioxide and the Climate

This is a classic: Gilbert (1956) Carbon Dioxide and the Climate (reissued).

Where Batteries Begin

Where Batteries Begin has great pictures and information on how and where we get the lithium we need for all these batteries that will solve global warming.

Climate Change in 10 Words

After John Cook: It’s real. It’s us. It’s bad. Experts agree. There’s hope.

2018 Was the Fourth Warmest Year

Nothing to see here: 2018 Was the Fourth Warmest Year, Continuing Long Warming Trend

Urban Footprint

Urban Footprint sounds cool, but even after exploring their website I'm not sure what it really is...they claim that Urban Footprint will allows us to "Teach basic and advanced planning methods without the hassle of traditional GIS systems".

How we make electricity

Here are interactive web resources related to electricity generation in the US:

• U.S. Power Plants, 2016 allows you to compare electricity generation in 2007 and in 2016.
• An Atlas of Electricity is a fully-immersive Esri Story Map

MOL: The Map of Life

MOL Map of Life has it all: interactive web map, data, and an app to contribute to biodiversity observations.

Average Cloud Cover in 2018

This is great: Average Earth from Space 2018
More details here.

https://hannes.enjoys.it/blog/2019/01/average-earth-from-space-2018/

Does that explain it?

Climate Disasters 2018

Deadly weather: the human cost of 2018's climate disasters – visual guide from The Guardian is intense. Maybe too intense - too much visual fireworks that distract from the story.

2018 Winds

This is super-cool: 2018 Winds

This animation nicely shows the main large-scale wind systems and, superimposed, the travels of mid-latitude cyclones in the Westerlies and tropical cyclones ('hurricane pearls') in the Trade Winds.

Embedded below is a similar effort by nullschool (hurricane season starts ~1:15).

Gilbert Plass (1956 and 1959)

Gilbert Plass had this all figured-out 50 years ago.

• Plass (1956): The Carbon Dioxide Theory of Climatic Change
• Plass (1959): Carbon Dioxide and Climate

Google Tour Creator

Google Tour Creator is basically a quick and simple way to build tours using Google Street View imagery. Here's a quick video: How to Use Google's VR Tour Creator.

Nice tool, especially for urbanized and developed areas with good Street View imagery.

ArcGIS Hub Open Data Portal

The ArcGIS Hub Open Data Portal is great.

• Finding Data on ArcGIS Hub Open Data Portal helps you with finding data.
• Hubs Around the World lets you explore open data hubs as a Story Map.

The Distressed Communities Index

 Read more about it here: From Great Recession to Great Reshuffling and explore the interactive map. Now overlay that on the 2016 election map and tell me what you see (Elizabeth Warren!).