EXPLORING Climate Trends
Role: Data Analyst, Data Visualization Designer
Tools Used: SQL, Excel, Sketch
GOAL
The California Department of Parks and Recreation is responsible for almost one-third of California's coastline. To assist the Department in seeking grant funds to preserve the natural habitat of Bay Area parks and minimize local warming, I analyzed local Bay Area temperature data in relation to overall global temperature trends. *
WHAT I DID
Use SQL to extract relevant data from 71,922 rows in 3 databases
Quantify relationships between local and global temperatures
Design a custom visualization to communicate findings
The Process
Question. How are local San Francisco Bay Area temperatures related to global temperatures: Are they both increasing? Are they following a similar trajectory? Can we use temperature trends to mitigate long-term local and global warming?
Wrangle. I wrote SQL queries to extract relevant information from 3 databases. I was interested in San Francisco temperatures, global temperatures, and other cities to use for comparison. I gathered some of the warmest and coldest cities in the world to gain perspective on where SF is situated.
Explore. I exported the data and manipulated it in Excel. Rather than using annual averages, I calculated 5-, 10-, and 20-year moving averages to evaluate which would best smooth out the lines to make trends more easily observable; the 5-year was too detailed and the 20-year not detailed enough. Some cities had older data, but I included only data from 1900-2014 for consistency. I created line charts to compare global moving averages with various cities.
Draw Conclusions.
SF temperatures are 1.66x warmer than the global average. SF is nearly in the top third of warmest cities worldwide.
The world is warming. There is an upward trend for both global and SF temperatures, commonly believed to be largely due to greenhouse gas emissions that trap heat near earth’s surface. Greenhouse gasses include carbon dioxide (CO2), methane, and nitrous oxide. Though warming is not uniform across the planet, the upward global trend shows that more areas are warming than cooling.
Warming has accelerated over the 20th century; warming over the last 50 years is nearly twice that for last 100 years. CO2 is believed to be the primary driver of the warming trend seen over the last 100 years but is not the only factor. Climate change drivers accelerating this warming also include other greenhouse gases, solar, ozone, volcanic, and sulfates (aerosols).
SF is not warming as fast as the global average. SF is 0.80ºC warmer while the global is 1.42ºC warmer from 1900 to 2000s (based based on average daily temperatures).
SF temperatures exhibit more fluctuations than the global average. Natural variables—such as El Nino rains, volcanic eruptions, pollution, and CO2—can cause short-term warming and cooling locally.
There’s a mid-century cooling trend in the Northern Hemisphere (1940s-1970s). CO2 warming might have been eclipsed by other factors such as aerosol pollution, volcanic eruptions (eject sulfates into the stratosphere), and a possible decline in solar activity.
Communicate Results. I penciled my observations on paper and decided which findings to include. I created a final visualization in Sketch.
Conclusion
Although local weather patterns are more variable and may not be indicative of long-term global climate trends, we can observe and document weather locally to influence public opinion, policy support, and mitigation behavior on a national and international level to help minimize global warming.
* This project uses real data but is a fictitious scenario.
