National Parks: Crowds & Climate

This is a very cool analysis: what's the best time of the year to visit a given US national park if you want to balance crowds & weather? Sure, there are hardly any crowds in Glacier National Park in January, but you are in the middle of winter. Likewise, J-Tree is pretty empty in July, but can you deal with the heat?

Explore it all here: How to See the Most Popular US National Parks, Without the Crowds

An American Mosaic

Coool interactive web map by the NYT: An American Mosaic

There is an article to go along, but that's behind the NYT paywall.

Svalbard: Fossil Fuels, Geopolitics & Science

Good article here: Feeling a chill

Basically, Svalbard finds itself at the center 21st century geopolitics 'cloaked' as science between the USA, Europe, Russia, China, India. etc.

Have people stopped trusting science? The data tell a surprising story

Have people stopped trusting science? The data tell a surprising story (Nature, 1 July 2026) shows something that I did not expect - see figure below.

• The about 20 percent drop for Republicans beginning around 2018 makes sense: Thanks Donald & Fox News!
• But, what causes the about 10 percent drop for Democrats starting around 2020 & the about 5 percent drop for Independents starting a few years later? Is that just a methods artifact due to COVID?

Urban Plannning & Washington DC

Great scrolly map from the NYT for our history & urban planning nerds: Washington Has Been Carefully Planned for Two Centuries

The 3-30-300 'Rule'

Cool stuff over on Maps Mania: The 3-30-300 Rule for urban trees & interactive mapping tool. Read more about this rule or goal @ https://www.330300rule.com/.

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

The Reuters Climate Monitor

Pretty cool data viz: The Reuters Climate Monitor

The interactive globe is cool, but the chart below is more interesting & shows just how much the New Normal is above the Old Normal.

The AMOC!

Excellent arcticle & visuals about the AMOC: Shifting currents - After decades of warnings, new data suggest the Atlantic’s vital circulation may withstand climate warming better than feared

Also available as a PDF here.

El Nino: Good Summary!

 

Ozone Pollution From Space

Air Pollution’s Daily Pulse Over the Northeast is a cool example of how we can now monitor air pollutions from space & how it changes over the course of the day! You start with the NO2 plumes from car exhaust & how they dissipate over the course of the day. Then you can look at the plumes of ground-level ozone created from the NO2 & their spatial patterns which are impacted by wind patters.

How the Iran War Spiked Oil Prices

Recent Land Use Changes: USA

This is interesting: A Shift in What’s Shaping U.S. Landscapes

The three main types of land use changes are urban sprawl, logging, and agriculture & here the New England has remained pretty stable over the last 40+ years or so. Why? The main land use changes had already occurred by 1988.

Ellis: Your Trusted & Experienced Teacher Colleague

This is pretty cool: imagine you have 24/7/365 access to a very experienced colleague who is also up-to-date with the latest research and best-practices when it comes to learning differences and mental health. Well, Ellis is supposed to be just that & (of course) is powered by AI.

• Ellis: Your On-Demand Classroom Companion
• Ellis Product Walkthrough 2026 (YouTube)
• https://www.askellis.org/

It's difficult to imagine that this could work...but a) it may be better than nothing and could b) be useful in Higher Education where the teachers (= professors) usually have little or no training or experience with such issues.

Ethics in GIS

Interesting read: Enlisting AI to Mainstream Ethics in Spatial Data Science Education

Here's a new-to-me term: Ethics Across the Curriculum or EAC - the idea that ethics should be woven throught the entire curriculum from beginning to end. Here are some resources:

• The Guide to the Geographic Approach  contains 15 open-access modules & some of those include ethical issues and questions.
• Now there is GISEthics.org and its collectiom of 21 case studies.

What to do in-practice? Three things: 1) use a formal case study analysis, 2) use a disucssion forum prompt, and 3) include an ethics-related learning objective. How you may ask? Try the AI-based Ethics Case Study and Discussion Prompt Creator and create yourself a case study that aligns with your course content, a customized discussion forum prompt. and even your learning objective for the course syllabus.

Here's a complete case study from Claudi.ai: When the Map Has a Memory

ArcGIS Story Maps

A compliation of useful resources related to Esri / ArcGIS Story Maps / ArcGIS Online

The Big Picture

• How to create an accessible story structure in ArcGIS StoryMaps
• Narrative structures for stronger storytelling
• Create more engaging impact reports with ArcGIS StoryMaps

Formats

• Introducing Frames | Mobile-first, short-form storytelling for ArcGIS StoryMaps
• Introducing ArcGIS StoryMaps Frames: Mobile-First Storytelling for Modern Audiences

Mapping / Legends

• Legends for storytelling part 1: Optimizing the basics
• Legends for storytelling part 2: Creative approaches

Analysis

• Getting More from ModelBuilder Online: Tips and Tricks

Your Name in Landsat!

Silly, but fun: Your Name in Landsat

Maybe even a good way to explore landforms in a Physical Geography class!

Poster Design: #evenbetterposter

Tired of the old 3-column or 4-column for your scientific poster? Try #evenbetterposter instead!

ChatGPT Images 2.0

I have not tested it, but apparently ChatGPT Images 2.0 can basically create a complete research poster for you. Not sure how this would work in-practice for anything that includes 'original' research, but it should work fine for the classic student literature-review poster.

How The Heck Does GPS Work?

Good, albeit a little nerdy: How The Heck Does GPS Work?

Social Media For AI Agents

This is brilliant & scary at the same time: imagine AI agents 'chatting' with each other via social media using a Reddit-style interface. Moltbook seems to be that.

Then there is Agent4Science = a social network for AI scientists. Read more about it here.

Now we need more AIs to analyze these interactions & see if we can learn if/how AI agents change over time. This will also generate vast amounts of new potential training data for the AIs themselves much the same way that human Reddit & Facebook threads are used as AI training data.

Urban AI

Interesting article: Datacenters as core infrastructure of urban AI

He basically argues that the so-called 'cloud' comes with serious environmental impacts and externalities. Sure, we all want smart cities (aka data-driven urbanism) managed by Urban AIand love to talk about the cool edge-computing devices, but there is a hidden infrastructure (often in the suburbs & beyond) that make all this possible and that raises serious questions related to ownership. governance, and operation.

Here, physical distance or proximity often becomes irrelevant and with that many of our existing regulatory system fail.

Cloud providers want a) cheap electricity, b) low taxes, c) lax regulations, and d) proximity to high-speed connecticity. Thus, clusters develop along metropolitan corridors and once again regions farther away are left behind. Furthermore, AI providers obviously prefer to serve profitable sectors of the economy as opposed to common good public functions.

For cities this also means an increasing dependence on a small number of vendors who control the infrastructure & access to it. We are 'locked-into' whatever we choose.

In summary: Urban AI or any AI for that matter means infrastructure & calling it 'the cloud' hides the fact that this infrastructure and access to it creates power & privilege.

Outdoor Recreation Data

Great data, great data viz, great interactive maps, and all the data are free to download as CSV files: Outdoor Recreation Data

EVs Are Cheaper!

Kathrine Hayhoe: Christians, Creation, and Climate Change

 Good stuff especially towards the end: Solution aversion & talk about it!

The Institute and Faculty of Actuaries

The Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (or IFoA) produces excellent synthesis & reports related to climate change. Here's the latest one: Parasol Lost: Recovery plan needed

Remember, these are actuaries =  experts in the measurement and management of risk and uncertainty. More about the report in the video below.

Cartokit

Cartokit is a direct manipulation programming environment for interactive cartography on the web. Vey cool! See more over on GitHub: https://github.com/parkerziegler/cartokit

RUST

RUST is apparently the new hip programming language: https://rust-lang.org/

State of the Global Climate 2025

The State of the Global Climate 2025 by the WMO is out and confirms once again what we have already known for decades. This one comes with a cool ArcGIS Dashboard of the 2025 Extreme Events, a great tool for presenting such data.

The highlights: The last 11 years (i.e. 2015 - 2025) have been the hottest on record with 2024 being the hottest & 2025 the 2nd hottest.

The Dance of the Continents

Dance of the continents is a very nice Esri Story Map showing the interplay of plate tectonics and evolution over the last 600 million years. I especially like the first section where you can step backwards in time to see the (current) continents come together first as Pangea and then again as Rodinia.

AI & Jobs: Vulnerability

Saw this on Flowing Data: Jobs vulnerable to AI. This links to Measuring US workers’ capacity to adapt to AI-driven job displacement where the authors 'mapped' job vulnerability as a function of a) exposure andb) adaptability.

Defossilization

That was a new term for me: defossilization. We will still very much need carbon-based compounds (even after we transition to 100 percent sustainable energy) for manfacturing of plastics, detergents, medicines, and more.

Okay, so we still have plenty of oil around...so why not use the oil for that? We should have plenty 'excess' capacity in the oil fields! Plan is a CO2-to-methanol process powered by solar energy and then the methanol is converted to olefines (e.g. ethylene & propylene) which are petrochemicals that can be used to manufacture plastics and more.

Bill McKibben

Bill McKibben is always a worthy read & watch:

• They’re doing to America what they did to Christianity (The Guardian)
• https://youtu.be/HZdKKD0oLrs

Here's his main take from the article:

The 'old' heart of Christianity was lover & concern for other as lived by Jesus. The 'new' heart of Christianity is personal salvation and that required them to 're-make' Jesus into some else entirely.

Back in the late 1950s, some 52 percent of Americans were part of the so-called mainline denominations (e.g. Methodist, Lutherans, Congregationalists, Episcopalians, etc.) and about 33 percent were Catholics. Modern Christanity is instead dominated by megachurches, TV ministries, and right-wing evangelicals who are the MAGA core.

Mainline Protestantism surrenderd their version of Jesus to this new toxic form of Christianity without a fight & we see the same thing today with America: we are surrendering our version of America (as imperfect as it is) to MAGA without much of a fight.

Your Electricty In Real-Time!

Two nice web apps & smartphone apps:

• Electricity Maps (global)
• ISO New England Real-Time Maps & Charts

AI: The Good & The Bad

So many nuances to AI - here's a compilation of resources:

• Cheap AI chatbots transform medical diagnoses in places with limited care
• xxx

Data Center Infrastructure in the United States (2025)

The map of Data Center Infrastructure in the United States, 2025 is just that: a classic 'static' map.

Cracking Ice!

Cool satellite image animation shared by NASA!

Food Deserts / Grocery Deserts

Great web map: Mapping Food Deserts and Grocery Store Consolidation

Now...if they would only offer a way to download the data!

The Oldest Globe

As seen on Maps Mania: the world’s oldest surviving terrestrial globe from 1492 that obivously does not yet include the Americas!

Letters From The Earth

Cool project & something that I have been thinking about: sure, we have plenty of data & facts, but now can those be made a) meaningful to b) promote reasonable actions?

Letters From The Earth uses AI to translate 'boring' data into expressive text = If the Earth could describe its own day using the same signals we collect about it, what would it say?

Their Core Hypothesis: Data contains expressive qualities beyond analytics, and AI can translate those qualities into new modalities that invite more people to participate in understanding and meaning.

Fair Point!

 

Cloud Optimized Data Formats

Cloud Optimized Data Formats is about as boring as it gets...but not when they are explained in a fun zine-comic book! Here's the link: Optimizing Geospatial for the Cloud

Brilliant!

Brilliant has been around for a while, but the free version always has been a little limited. But there is an Education Version for K-12 as well that offer free premium access - might be interesting!

Napkin.ai

From the website: "Napkin turns your text into visuals so sharing your ideas is quick and effective." Sounds interesting and there is a free version.

Try it here: https://www.napkin.ai/

The Kitzmiller v. Dover Quiz!

Pretty cool: The Kitzmiller v. Dover Quiz

More about this topic here: https://ncse.ngo/articles/260

EMBER

EMBER offers great data and nice visual data explorers for all kinds of domestic and international energt data. The data are available for download as CSVs and the interactive charts as PNGs and the data for each chart as CSVs as well = great!

• US Electricity Data Explorer
• Electricity Data Explorer (international)