Throughout this course we have been analyzing the global climate and the procedures and tools used to evaluate it. On February 19th The New York Times put together an interesting database, with the help of AccuWeather, to show the detailed temperature and precipitation patters for 1,801 American cities and 1,334 other locations around the globe. The database shows this information as an interactive chart, where the user inputs the city and the following temperatures and precipitation data for the year 2015 are visually compared with past patterns. The reason they have chosen to compare the year 2015 is because more than 90 percent of the cities had a warmer-than-average year, claiming it to be the hottest year on record.
I found this interesting because it goes hand in hand to what we have been doing and learning in class. We are constantly evaluating the same types of charts and now they are being publicly displayed and used on a high congestion news site, The New York Times. I also played with the charts and found cool information on some of the valuable cities in my own life. I found that Philadelphia had record temperatures in both the months of June, September, and November in 2015. Along with State college, having record temps in November and December.
Overall, the site shows an exciting progression towards global warming awareness and solidifies the fact that we are experiencing a very important time in global history. It is cool to see that the New York Times getting involved and allowing its users to visualize this type of climate data. It will be interesting to see if the 2016 chart will also contain record-breaking temperatures.
Lai, K.K Rebecca. “The Times’s Classic Weather Chart: Now Online With 3,000 Cities.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 19 Feb. 2016. Web. 23 Feb. 2016. <http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/02/18/upshot/the-times-classic-weather-chart-now-online-with-3000-cities.html>.