Tag Archives: data source

How do views on major institutions differ by political affiliation?

The Pew article Republicans increasingly critical of several major U.S. institutions, including big corporations and banks by Ted Van Green (8/20/2021) includes the chart copied here.  The charts show clearly that republicans are more critical than in 2019, but it would seem that gaps are more concerning.  Republicans are more critical of banks and corporations than two years ago but that puts them right around democrats.  In other instances viewpoints are diverging. The 76 to 34 positive viewpoint difference on college and universities seems concerning and from the article:

The survey finds that partisan differences extend to views of K-12 public schools: 77% of Democrats say they have a positive effect, compared with 42% of Republicans. A 57% majority of Republicans, including nearly two-thirds of conservative Republicans (65%), say public elementary and secondary schools have a negative effect.

Discussion of the data as well as the reporting of the data and ramifications of the results would seem to fit into many a course. Pew has a methodology section and the data.

 

How do I find climate rankings for my state?

Have you wondered if your state just had the hottest, driest, wettest, etc. month? You can get this information from NOAA’s Statewide Ranking page. For example, the graphic here is for California for July 2021. The output will provide ranking information for 1-12, 18, 24, 36, 48, and 60-month time periods.  The 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 month periods ending in July 2021 have been the hottest on record going back 127 years. The page allows users to select a state and various periods. Each output also has a link to the data. An overview and definitions of these ranking is given on the Climatological Rankings page.

How much LNG do we export?

The eia article U.S. natural gas net trade is growing as annual LNG exports exceed pipeline exports by Kristen Tsai (8/16/2021) has the chart here that answers the question.

In our August 2021 Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO), we forecast that U.S. natural gas exports will exceed natural gas imports by an average of 11.0 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) in 2021, or almost 50% more than the 2020 average of 7.5 Bcf/d. Increases in liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports and in pipeline exports to Mexico are driving this growth in U.S. natural gas exports. For the first time since U.S. LNG exports from the Lower 48 states began in 2016, annual LNG exports are expected to outpace pipeline exports—by an estimated 0.6 Bcf/d—this year.

We roughly export 10-15 billion cubic feet per day of natural gas. Is this a good idea from a sustainability perspective or national security perspective?

eia has links to their data.

 

How hot was July 2021?

From NOAA’s Global Climate Report – July 2021:

As a whole, the July 2021 global surface temperature was the highest for July since global records began in 1880 at 0.93°C (1.67°F) above the 20th-century average of 15.8°C (60.4°F). This value surpassed the previous record set in 2016 (and subsequently matched in 2019 and 2020) by only 0.01°C (0.02°F). Because July is the warmest month of the year from a climatological perspective, July 2021 was more likely than not the warmest month on record for the globe since 1880. Nine of the 10 warmest Julys have occurred since 2010, with the last seven Julys (2015-2021) being the seven warmest Julys on record.

The data is available at the top of the page under Additional Resources.

How did CEOs do during the pandemic?

Did CEOs take a pay hit like many workers did during the pandemic? The article CEO pay has skyrocketed 1,322% since 1978 by Lawrence Mishel and Jori Kandra (8/10/2021) suggests CEOs did just fine last year. Their chart shows that realized CEO compensation grew during 2020 compared to the average worker.

Details on the metric:

We focus on the average compensation of CEOs at the 350 largest publicly owned U.S. firms (i.e., firms that sell stock on the open market) by revenue. Our source of data is the S&P ExecuComp database for the years 1992 to 2020 and survey data published by the Wall Street Journal for selected years back to 1965. We maintain the sample size of 350 firms each year when using the ExecuComp data.

The realized measure of compensation includes the value of stock options as realized (i.e., exercised), capturing the change from when the options were granted to when the CEO invokes the options, usually after the stock price has risen and the options values have increased. The realized compensation measure also values stock awards at their value when vested (usually three years after being granted), capturing any change in the stock price as well as additional stock awards provided as part of a performance award.

The granted measure of compensation values stock options and restricted stock awards by their “fair value” when granted (Compustat estimates of the fair value of options and stock awards as granted determined using the Black Scholes model).

Well maybe CEO pay just went down less than worker pay and that is why the ratio went up. In table 1, realized pay for 2019 is $20,351,000 with 2020 projected as $24,194,00. There are other graphs in the article and data available for download.

How much of the West is in drought?

Over 99% of the West has been in drought for the month of July and 4/6/2021 was the last time it was below 90%. Roughly 25% has been in exceptional drought since May. Over 60 million people (about 20% of the U.S. population) are estimated in the drought areas in the West. The definition of exceptional drought:

  • Exceptional and widespread crop/pasture losses

  • Shortages of water in reservoirs, streams, and wells creating water emergencies

The U.S. Drought Monitor has data for download including time series and GIS files.

How much has CO2 emissions increased?

The visual here is from the NASA feature How Much Carbon Dioxide Are We Emitting? by Matthew Conlen (7/15/2021) may help us all understand the change in CO2 emissions.

In 1900, almost 2 billion metric tons of CO2 were released due to fossil fuel usage. By 1960, that number had more than quadrupled to over 9 billion metric tons.

The latest data from the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center shows that over 35 billion metric tons of CO2 were released in 2014. *

There is a link to CO2 data at the bottom of the article. If you’d like a graph this one is included on the page:

How Low is Lake Mead?

The Bureau of Reclamation posts the end of month elevation for Lake Mead dating back to 1935. I created the graph of minimum yearly end of month elevation starting in 1940 since Hoover Dam was only created in 1935. Here is the R code to create the graph including importing the data directly from the webpage. I’ll leave it as a project to normalize this based on the number of people the reservoir serves.

How hot was June 2021?

From NOAA’s Global Climate Report – June 2021:

The June 2021 global surface temperature was the fifth highest for June in the 142-year record at 0.88°C (1.58°F) above the 20th century average. Only Junes of 2015 (fourth warmest), 2016 (second warmest), 2019 (warmest), and 2020 (third warmest) were warmer and had a global temperature departure above +0.90°C (+1.62°F). Nine of the 10 warmest Junes have occurred since 2010.

But June seemed hot you say? Yup:

The global land-only surface temperature for June 2021 was the highest on record at 1.42°C (2.56°F) above average. This value surpassed the previous record set in 2019 by +0.11°C (+0.20°F). The ten warmest June global land-only surface temperatures have occurred since 2010. The unusually warm June global land-only surface temperature was mainly driven by the very warm Northern Hemisphere land, which also had its highest June temperature departure at +1.69°C (+3.04°F). The now second highest June temperature for the Northern Hemisphere occurred in 2012 (+1.51°C / +2.72°F).

Time series data is available at the link near the top of the page.

 

What is the Vegetative Health Index?

From the NOAA STAR Center for Satellite Applications and Research page:

Global and Regional Vegetation Health (VH) is a NOAA/NESDIS system estimating vegetation health, moisture condition, thermal condition and their products.

It contains Vegetation Health Indices (VHI) derived from the radiance observed by the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) onboard afternoon polar-orbiting satellites: the NOAA-7, 9, 11, 14, 16, 18 and 19 and VIIRS from Soumi-NPP satellite.

And

The VH products can be used as proxy data for monitoring vegetation health, drought, soil saturation, moisture and thermal conditions, fire risk, greenness of vegetation cover, vegetation fraction, leave area index, start/end of the growing season, crop and pasture productivity, teleconnection with ENSO, desertification, mosquito-borne diseases, invasive species, ecological resources, land degradation, etc.

The following indices and products are available:
Vegetation Health (VHI)
Vegetation Condition Index (VCI)
Temperature Condition Index (TCI)
Soil Saturation Index (SSI)
No noise Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (SMN)
No noise Brightness Temperature (SMT)
and more.

There is a page with maps (and links to shapefiles) and an interactive page with time series graphs for different states. The one for NY is copied here. It seems like there are some uses for stats courses tied to correlations with temperature (and you can add climate max/min to the graphs) and more. There is a page to download data (see left sidebar) but you’ll have to be able to handle netcdf files.