Temperature on the rise

Author: Pedro Henrique Cintra

The data for this visualization comes from the ERA5 analysis from the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecast (ECMWF), available online at https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/. On this visualization we are able to look at different aspects of climate change. First and foremost, the global map shows the temperature anomaly i.e. the warming of the planet, compared to the period from 1951 to 1980, allowing us to notice a regions where the warming is greater and lower. One may notice the blue region on top of the nordic countries, showing that indeed some places might experience a slight decrease in temperature. However this is more of a particular case than the general trend. Next to the map, we see a chart showing the average anomaly per latitude. On this chart we notice how the northern hemisphere warms much more than the south. We also notice how latitudes close to the north pole have the highest warming averages. Finally, the stripes below bring us the historical record for the global mean temperature anomaly from 1940 to 2023, allowing us to notice the clear upward trend in temperature. Together, these three charts bring a broad view on climate change and its heterogenity around the world, alongside the general trend.