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Tracking Heat Records in 400 U.S. Cities
- anonymousiam 4y agoInteresting new site here that lets you explore historic temperatures and trends: http://realclimatetools.com/apps/graphing/index.html http://realclimatetools.com/apps/graphing/index.html
- WaxedChewbacca 4y ago
- rektide 4y agoUniversity of Maine's Climate Reanalyzer is my trusted, respected go to. They have long time series: https://climatereanalyzer.org/reanalysis/monthly_tseries/ https://climatereanalyzer.org/reanalysis/monthly_tseries/ They have wonderful daily difference-from-average "anomoly" maps: https://climatereanalyzer.org/wx/DailySummary/#t2anom https://climatereanalyzer.org/wx/DailySummary/#t2anom I really dislike this site you've linked. The whole middle of the chart is completely overwhelmed with data points unless you zoom way in, until you can only see a decade or so. There's the extreme data points of each year that stick out, but what's actually happening most of the time is utterly occluded & unclear. The data masks rather than informs.
- WaxedChewbacca 4y ago
- a_square_peg 4y agoHere's something similar, created from the same dataset (ERA5): https://climate-explorer.oikolab.com https://climate-explorer.oikolab.com - I created this to show how temperature has changed for any arbitrary location of interest. Working on adding CMIP6 projection too.
- anonymousiam 4y agoWhich version of the temperature record are these tools using, the original raw data, or the adjusted data? Do you have confidence in the rationale and methodology for the adjustments? http://myweb.wwu.edu/dbunny/pdfs/Evid_Based_Climate_Sci/Ev_Based_Climate_Sci_Chap3.pdf http://myweb.wwu.edu/dbunny/pdfs/Evid_Based_Climate_Sci/Ev_B...
- a_square_peg 4y agoYikes - that reference is some dentists-having-opinions-on-brain-surgery conspiracy stuff. I've seen these before and really not sure why people who study rocks have strong opinions on climate science. A few points: - Reanalysis data is generated from all available data source - land station, satellite, weather balloon, airplanes, etc. They are corrected from observational biases, using the similar approach as Kalman filter, combining data with known laws of physics. - I do have confidence and use these data for analyzing weather-driven utility load data with excellent result. - The data assimilation process and methodologies are all well documented - https://rmets.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/qj.3803 https://rmets.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/qj.38...
- Proven 4y ago
- voz_ 4y agoThis is a very difficult to navigate site. I wish I had the data presented almost any other way. Which is a shame, because its a cool idea, w/ cool analysis. You should open source the data.
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- shagie 4y ago> You should open source the data. The data isn't theirs to open source (or not). > Temperature records are collected from ACIS, which tracks weather for approximately 400 US cities. ACIS has data from the ThreadEx project. The ThreadEx project is http://threadex.rcc-acis.org http://threadex.rcc-acis.org This suggests its using the data from a service that is collected from http://www.ncei.noaa.gov http://www.ncei.noaa.gov which right on the front has: Looking for Data?
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- butwhywhyoh 4y agoWhy does this force me to scroll through this like a slideshow? Anyone else reminded of the bad-old-days when Flash websites were common and broke all UI norms?
- kilovoltaire 4y agoI assume it's based on the UI of Instagram Stories, which maybe feels quite natural for some people (not me so much)
- ModernMech 4y agoI think these kinds of sites are made by people who never experienced that hell.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- paulcole 4y agoNo, I think it’s really cool! Their website, their decision on how to “force” you to experience it. Remember, you can always close the tab if it’s not compelling or interesting to you personally.
- boomboomsubban 4y agoI accidentally clicked past the last page, hit the back button then had to go through the thing again. As I was rushing, I missed the last page again, and could not figure out how to go back. Scrolling would have trivialized this issue.
- paulcole 4y agoWhat’s the lesson here? Click carefully and don’t rush?
- calsy 4y agoAhh its the users fault for not reading the data before clicking. Imagine an unholy text book where once you turn the page, the pages before become inaccessible. Its your own fault for not understanding everything on the previous page and you have to read the entire thing before you can start again to find that page. Yes its the users fault.
- nope96 4y agofrom the same site: The US has gone $days since a record high temperature https://pudding.cool/2022/03/weather-map/ https://pudding.cool/2022/03/weather-map/
- lisper 4y agoWould be interesting to have the same info for a record low.
- tomjakubowski 4y agoOr for record high lows ("the low has never been this warm").
- subroutine 4y agoIndeed, this would be both interesting and an important control metric.
- shagie 4y agoI can pull up some summary data (e.g. averaged across a month) at sites like https://www.aos.wisc.edu/~sco/clim-history/7cities/madison.html#Daily https://www.aos.wisc.edu/~sco/clim-history/7cities/madison.h... Graphs such as https://www.aos.wisc.edu/~sco/clim-history/stations/msn/MSN-TS-ANN-T.gif https://www.aos.wisc.edu/~sco/clim-history/stations/msn/MSN-... show the average high, mean, and low temperature. This is even more pronounced if you look at the summer (June, July, August) temperatures - https://www.aos.wisc.edu/~sco/clim-history/stations/msn/MSN-TS-JJA-T.gif https://www.aos.wisc.edu/~sco/clim-history/stations/msn/MSN-... You can also look and, while it isn't the daily records, you can see the daily temperatures - https://www.aos.wisc.edu/~sco/clim-history/stations/msn/msn-tts-2022.gif https://www.aos.wisc.edu/~sco/clim-history/stations/msn/msn-... for this year so far.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y agoGiven you have 400 samples a day, what is the baseline expected days since record high temperature just based on statistical variation?
- rangewookie 4y agoThe "story" being told doesn't have a clear through line. I didn't understand the context for anything. I also didn't see any of the information I wanted to see. What was the hottest year? What was the year with the most broken records? What is the overall trend? It actually told me what the hottest day on record was, but there is so much to read I completely glazed over and missed it the first time.
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- KennyBlanken 4y agoInteresting that the site uses ipinfo.io, an analytics service that brags about, among other things "Detect[ing] various methods used to mask a user's true IP address, including VPN detection, proxy detection and more." They appear to even offer a service designed to detect "privacy" users using tor and such. I'm really curious why the site needs such invasive analytics. It's not by accident - it costs a minimum $1200/year.
- thadk 4y agoI have interacted with this site and its ownership a fair amount online. My guess would be they're trying to gauge true interest in topics so they can refine their editorial perspective. And $100/mo might not seem so much if it can make debunking interest-spoofing attempts more trivial, especially if there is ever any kind of bonus to the visualization authors for having a big hit.
- nextos 4y agoThis is cool, but why not using rigorous statistics? Block maxima (e.g daily max temperature) follow a generalized extreme value (GEV) distribution. One can try to see whether this distribution is stationary or not. Things can get much fancier by e.g. modeling correlations across cities but the above is pretty basic. A great practical intro is: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-1-4471-3675-0 https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-1-4471-3675-0
- cc344 4y agoI think this is an interesting project, it does seem to present the information in a rather biased way. I’m not trying to dispute whether things are warmer, but I would like to better understand what the underlying data consists of. I know they have 148 years of data, so I’m curious how that data was collected even 50 to 70 years ago let alone 100 years ago. There has to be a change in the quality of the data collection over time. It would be challenging to fairly compare data from the last 10 or so years to a similar timeframe 100 years ago. I would imagine data doesn’t even exist in some of the cities. Maybe people who have more expertise in the field or the data collection can chime in.
- epolanski 4y ago> It would be challenging to fairly compare data from the last 10 or so years to a similar timeframe 100 years ago. Why? A thermometer works exactly the same it did 100 years ago. For such a simple measurement like temperature I can't think of many reasons why measurements from the 30s could be significantly different (as in more than fractions). I also guess that if the data was considered unreliable for any reason it would not be used.
- brian_cloutier 4y agoI don't have any particular reason to believe the data is unreliable, I'm inclined to believe temperates are actually rising, but it's fun to try to come up with reasons why the rise might be artificial: - Most cities grow and develop over time and the parts of cities with more buildings and especially with more cement will radiate more heat. If an observation station was built somewhere less developed then city growth might artificially push up temperatures around the station. This effect might be strongest somewhere like Phoenix or LA. - This one seems unlikely (well, I'm sure it happens but it's very likely to have already been corrected for) but aggregation methods might have changed over time. I could imagine in the 30s someone might check the thermometer every hour and record the current temperature in a logbook. Modern thermometers are almost certainly automated. If the "highest temperature" is measured by recording the temperature each minute and taking the max then you're going to get a higher number than the manual method. - site selection might have changed: observation posts probably used to be buildings which needed to be large enough to fit equipment and the people to operate them. City real-estate is expensive and meteorology used to be a cost-center so these buildings were probably placed at the edge of town. I'm sure modern stations are much smaller, they don't need a full-time staff to operate them, so they can be placed closer to the (hotter) centers of cities. Alternatively: I'm sure many weather stations are now situated at airports, an option which was not available in the 30s, and airports are particularly pavement-heavy (hotter) parts of cities.
- jzer0cool 4y agoThis is pretty! What did you use to visualize the data for 1 day and about 3 weeks of data?
- jzer0cool 4y agoIn regards to the animation, I see a few posting that the slideshow / animation ruins the visualization. I particularly "like" this experience which is very hard to do well. What went into animating between these two views of the data?
- vl 4y agoMeanwhile it’s raining again in Seattle.
- User23 4y ago“And for me it was Tuesday.”
- eyelidlessness 4y agoNot sure if this is a local observation that it is in fact lightly raining in Seattle at the moment, or a glib observation of the stereotype. Just adding this for context for other readers, not a correction or dispute. The all time record high in Seattle (per the site’s data) was 107, last June. Other data I looked up shows 108. There are of course discrepancies between different data sources, my localized weather showed 112 that day. “Officially”, several days I’ve experienced >100 temps in my 20 years here are in the records as lower. We typically have little to no precipitation during the summer. And of course every weather statistic varies by year, persistently higher summer temps have arrived (albeit lagging behind many other places) along with a much longer and more severe wildfire season over the last few years. I’m crabby about the rain right now, but I fully expect to be relieved by it in a few short months.
- vl 4y agoIt literally was raining at the moment. But in fact this April and May are unusually cold and wet, very annoyingly so.
- eyelidlessness 4y agoI’m annoyed right there with you! Here’s hoping for a mild summer.
- elihu 4y agoNice site. In my case it just confirms that where I'm at (vicinity of Hillsboro Oregon) we've been having an unusually cold and wet spring. Some of the plants are only just now putting on leaves. I'm sure we'll return to the regularly scheduled inferno soon.
- jader201 4y agoI wonder why it’s only record highs and not record lows, too? I’d be interested to see extremes on both ends.
- henearkr 4y agoI know it is not my country, and that converting is not that difficult, but personally Fahrenheit degrees are meaningless for me.
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- Comevius 4y agoFahrenheit is intuitive. 0°F is the lowest air temperature measured in a town called Danzig in winter 1708-09, and water boils at 212°F. 4°F is ammonium chloride brine, and water freezes at 32°F. These are ballpark figures, you need Celsius or Kelvin to precisely define Fahrenheit.
- EForEndeavour 4y agoThe beauty of the HN community is that I genuinely can't tell if you're being sarcastic.
- vixen99 4y agoNot meaningless if you merely search for something like 'graphical Fahrenheit and Celsius', print out one of the representations of the two scales that appeals and keep it where you can see it for a day or so. Choosing at random I'd say that https://learn.weatherstem.com/modules/learn/lessons/62/img/diagram-temp-comparison.jpg https://learn.weatherstem.com/modules/learn/lessons/62/img/d... is quite neat.
- autoexec 4y agoJust to give you an idea: It's basically 0-100 0 is really cold. bellow freezing. Negative temps are pretty rare. freezing is 32 which you just have to memorize. 70 is room temperature, and 68-75 is comfortable for most 100 is really hot, temperatures above this are also fairly uncommon for most folks.
- 4y ago