VISUALIZING CLIMATE CHANGE

📈 Some of the most consequential findings in climate science have been communicated using visualization. The hockey stick graph — showing a sharp upward spike in global temperatures after centuries of relative stability — became one of the defining images of climate science. More recently, Ed Hawkins' warming stripes distilled over a century of temperature data into a single image that needed no axes or labels to make its point. Many other approaches exist (see below), and visual approaches like these are helping researchers, policymakers, industry, and the public better understand our changing world.

🏛️ In collaboration between the Edinburgh Futures Institute and Design Informatics' VisHub Lab, this free, open-to-everyone meetup explores how data visualization, visual storytelling, and computational methods can deepen our understanding of climate change in the UK — from urban sustainability and climate action to emerging work in visual analytics and human-centered approaches.

As part of the event we will have two talks by Andrew Sudmant and Jinrui Wang who will share insights about their collaboration on the UK Co-Benefits Atlas, an interactive map showing the social and economic gains of reaching net zero across more than 46,000 communities in the UK.

There will also be plenty of room for discussion - if you are working in the area of climate action/data representation there will be the opportunity to highlight these. We always welcome ad-hoc, informal talks, or project pitches from the audience.

🎤 Speakers
👤 Andrew Sudmant Website · Google Scholar
Andrew is Principal Investigator for co-benefits research at the Edinburgh Climate Change Institute and a contributor to Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports. His research explores the social, economic, and environmental co-benefits of climate action, with particular attention to cities, urban sustainability, and just transitions.

👤 Jinrui Wang Website · Google Scholar
Jinrui is a PhD researcher in Design Informatics and the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh working at the intersection of visualization, interaction, and data-driven systems. Jinrui's research explores how novel visual and computational approaches can help people understand complex information.

📊 Climate Visualization Examples:

❄️ Ice & cryosphere
🌐 ESA Climate from Space — Sea ice extent and change across five decades of satellite observations, explorable on an interactive 3D globe.
→ cfs.climate.esa.int
📈 NSIDC Charctic — Dynamically graph Arctic and Antarctic sea ice extent across years and compare trends and anomalies.
→ nsidc.org

🛰️ Multi-agency dashboards
🤝 ESA / NASA / JAXA Earth Observing Dashboard — Trilateral platform covering atmosphere, cryosphere, biomass, oceans, agriculture, and economy using data from three space agencies.
→ eodashboard.org

🌡️ Temperature & climate zones
🏙️ The Pudding — Climate Zones — 70 cities across all five climate zones, showing which city each will most resemble by 2070.
→ pudding.cool
📅 Copernicus — European State of the Climate 2024 — Temperature trends, extreme events, and an analysis of the first calendar year to exceed 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels.
→ climate.copernicus.eu
⏱️ Emanuele Bevacqua — Climate Visuals — The "coffee plot" global warming clock, CO₂ concentration stripes, and sea level rise visualizations.
→ emanuele.bevacqua.eu

🌐 Global platforms
👁️ NASA Eyes on the Earth — Real-time 3D visualization of eight planetary vital signs — sea level, CO₂, ice, soil moisture, and more — tracked across NASA's satellite fleet.
→ eyes.nasa.gov
🎞️ NASA Scientific Visualization Studio — Archive of animations and visualizations from NASA missions, including global temperature records and ice sheet change.
→ svs.gsfc.nasa.gov
📊 Our World in Data — Climate Change — Open-access charts covering emissions, temperature trends, and energy transitions, with strong per-country breakdowns.
→ ourworldindata.org
🗺️ World Bank Climate Knowledge Portal — Per-country and regional climate projections using multiple climate models, including historical data and warming stripes for any nation.
→ climateknowledgeportal.worldbank.org

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