Reality Mapping vs Digital Twins

This Esri article sounds like a lot of marketing word salad, but the animated GIF is cool!

True Orthos vs Trad Orthos & ArcGIS Reality

First, what is ArcGIS Reality?

I'm not entirely sure, here's what Esri says: ArcGIS Reality is a suite of photogrammetry software products designed to enable reality capture workflows for sites, cities, and countries.

One main feature seems to be the abilaity to create & use so-capped True Orthophotos as opposed to Traditional Orthophotos.

• True Orthophotos vs. Traditional Orthophotos: Why do pixels matter in the age of AI?
• The Different Types of Ortho Images Created in ArcGIS

The animated GIF below demonsrates the main difference between true orthos & trad orthos. 

Climate.us

It is scary that we have come to this: Climate.us is the 'new' = reliable version of Climate.gov. More here: https://ncse.ngo/climateus-launches.

Here's the short version: Climate.us "launched the full version of its new independent, nonprofit climate information website, creating a public-backed home for trusted climate science at a time when access to federal climate resources has become increasingly vulnerable to disruption," according to a June 22, 2026 press release. The launch was covered by The New York Times (July 23, 2026), which described Climate.us as "an effort by former staff members at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to present climate science previously housed at climate.gov, including data, reports, articles, and congressionally mandated national climate assessments."

AI & Data Viz

How can we use AI as a collaborator for data viz? The folks over at SWD have a nice selection of videos and practical tutorials on how to collaborate with AI in the data viz / data storytelling process: https://www.storytellingwithdata.com/ai-data-storytelling

Jerry's Map

Read more about it here: https://www.jerrysmap.com/the-map

The map is an imaginary city comprised of over 4,000 8 x 10 inch panels. The static image is below and here's an interactive version: https://marcmajcher.github.io/jerrysmap/

Extreme Heat = The Undermeasured Natural Disaster

 

Global Warming = Warmer Troposphere & Colder Stratosphere

We already know that from a) basics physics, b) climate models, and c) observations. Here's the short version: In the troposphere, the energy received at the Earth's surface is dispersed by convection, storms, and wind = weather. In contrast, there is no 'weather' in the stratosphere - there is just no enough air up there to create convection and air pressure differences.

Instead, the temperature of the stratosphere & its vertical gradient is determined by a) UV radiation absorption by ozone = warming and infrared radiation emission from the CO2.

Now it gets interesting:

• More CO2 in the troposphere means more trapping of heat near the surfacce & thus warming.
• More CO2 in the stratosphere does the opposite: it emits more radition into space & thus causes cooling.

Furthermore, this cooling effect of CO2 in the stratosphere increases with altitude from basically zero at the tropopause to more and more as you go higher & higher. Why is that? Well, turns out that the ozone layer is relatively low in the stratosphere & its effect dimishes the higher you go in the stratosphere while at the same time the influence of CO2 gets stronger.

Yes, it gets warmer in the stratosphere due to the presence of ozone. This is not impacted by global warming. Global warming does mean that there is more CO2 in the stratosphere & that overall cools the stratosphere = shifts the vertical gradient to the left.

All that is basic physics!

Not something weird created by climate models!

More here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-026-01951-0