The Nenets are reindeer herders in Russia’s Arctic that migrate 800 miles each year. The National Geographic Article, They Migrate 800 Miles a Year. Now It’s Getting Tougher, tells their story. The Nenets have undertaken this annual migration for centuries, and at 800 miles round-trip, it’s one of the longest …
Read More »Are We Seeing More Hurricanes in the North Atlantic?
The Tropical Meteorology Project at CSU posts data on hurricanes (and tropical storms). From their data we created this bar chart that shows the top 21 years of hurricanes based on the number of storms. Of the top 21, eleven have occurred since 2000, and 2017 will already be in the …
Read More »Are Falls Getting Warmer?
Climate Central has your answer by providing graphs of the number of above average warm days in the fall since 1970, for most major cities in the U.S. Here is their graph for Duluth MN from their article More Warm Fall Days Across the U.S. In 2016 Duluth had over …
Read More »Which World Region Emits the Most CO2?
Our World in Data’s latest visualization is this graph of CO2 emissions by world region. If you go to the page you will find the usual high quality interactive graph with data in a excel file. You can read off the graph that in 2015 China emitted 10.23 Gt of …
Read More »How can we investigate snow cover?
NOAA has a page, Sea Ice and Snow Cover Extent, where you can create graphs for snow cover by four regions (Northern Hemisphere, North America and Greenland, Eurasia, and North America) for each month of the year. For example the graph here is for North America in March. The green …
Read More »How much land would the world need if everyone ate like the U.S.?
Our World in Data has the answer in their post, 50% of the world’s habitable land is used for agriculture. If we all ate like New Zealanders we would need 200% of habitable land, which is supplied in the chart. Simply put, the world all can’t eat like the U.S. …
Read More »How Much Are Fossil Fuels Subsidized?
Here is a post from the International Energy Agency (IEA). Energy Subsidies,with an interactive graph and data in an Excel spreadsheet. The data is in Millions of USD and you’ll see that the subsidies aren’t insignificant. The value of global fossil-fuel consumption subsidies in 2015 is estimated at around USD …
Read More »County Level Temperature Data and Projections
One of the best ways to engage students in sustainability discussions is to use local information. NOAA has you covered with The Climate Explorer. You can type in your zip code and get historical and projected climate data. Today we highlight temperature. For example, the associated graph is the average …
Read More »The Human Impact of Climate Change – The Guna People
This blog focuses on data, but we pause periodically to put the data into perspective. When educating about sustainability we want stories along with the data. The BBC provides such a story: The island people with a climate change escape plan. The Guna people live on small islands off Panama. …
Read More »Ocean Heat Content and Climate Change
NOAA’s Climate Change: Ocean Heat Content page provides a summary of the role the Ocean plays in Climate Change. Heat absorbed by the ocean is moved from one place to another, but it doesn’t disappear. The heat energy eventually re-enters the rest of the Earth system by melting ice shelves, …
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