Akshar Takle
An ultra-high-resolution NASA computer model has given scientists a stunning new look at how carbon dioxide in the atmosphere travels around the globe.
What you are looking at is supercomputer model of carbon dioxide levels in earths atmosphere. This stunning visualization compresses one year of data into a few minutes. Carbon dioxide is the most important green house gas affected by human activity. About half of the CO2 emitted by combustion of fossil fuels remains in the atmosphere, while the other half is absorbed by natural land and oceans. In the northern hemisphere we see the highest concentration are focused around major emission sources over North America, Europe and Asia. We can clearly see these industrial areas in the map where there is a darker shade of orange and red.
The most interesting thing to notice from this viz is that the gas does not stay in one place. There is dispersion of carbon dioxide which is largely controlled by weather patterns within the global circulation.
What I liked about this is it clearly shows the change in carbon dioxide levels over a period of time. We can easily get insights on the cause of these changes as we have the information about the regions and time (we can figure out the season from the day and month displayed at the bottom). At the end of spring and start of summer plants absorb substantial amount of carbon dioxide through photosynthesis thus removing some of the gas from atmosphere. We see this change in model as red and purple colors start to fade out. The same is conveyed very simply and clearly from the annual CO2 cycle line graphs.
We can see as summer transitions to fall, and plants photosynthesis decreases and carbon dioxide begins to accumulate in the atmosphere again.
What I don’t like:
At the point where nations vulnerable to climate change is shown, it is not clear why these countries? It looks like they are specifically talking about some countries and have excluded the surrounding region. For example we can see that countries in middle Africa are vulnerable but those in South Africa are not. We can think that as these countries are in southern hemisphere and surrounded by ocean bodies, the green house gas effect is less pronounced. But there are some countries in North Africa which emit less CO2 and are not in the vulnerability list.
Lets look at the graph of CO2 level since 1960 that is shown in the visualization. The graph is something like this:
The goal is to show average CO2 level each year in ppm. From the current graph, it is hard to find out the exact value of CO2 at a particular year.
What I would improve:
- Instead of highlighting the vulnerable countries, I would use a heat map with country borders and a color model that is contrast to the gas flow pattern to represent level of effect on the countries.
- As shown in the below graph, I would use a simple line graph to show the average value of CO2, so that the value corresponding to each year is easily readable
- It would be helpful to see a graph of CO2 levels for each month in consecutive years. That would would give us a better idea about the rate at which CO2 is increasing in our atmosphere.
Sources:
https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2016/12/12/13914942/interactive-map-cheapest-power-plant
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_Earth%27s_atmosphere
https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/a-closer-look-at-carbon-dioxide/
https://www.co2.earth/