[HN Gopher] Tracking Heat Records in 400 U.S. Cities
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Tracking Heat Records in 400 U.S. Cities
Author : feross
Score : 84 points
Date : 2022-05-24 21:31 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (pudding.cool)
(TXT) w3m dump (pudding.cool)
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Interesting that the site uses ipinfo.io, an analytics service
| that brags about, among other things "Detect[ing] various methods
| used to mask a user's true IP address, including VPN detection,
| proxy detection and more." They appear to even offer a service
| designed to detect "privacy" users using tor and such.
|
| I'm really curious why the site needs such invasive analytics.
| It's not by accident - it costs a minimum $1200/year.
| thadk wrote:
| I have interacted with this site and its ownership a fair
| amount online. My guess would be they're trying to gauge true
| interest in topics so they can refine their editorial
| perspective.
|
| And $100/mo might not seem so much if it can make debunking
| interest-spoofing attempts more trivial, especially if there is
| ever any kind of bonus to the visualization authors for having
| a big hit.
| nextos wrote:
| This is cool, but why not using rigorous statistics?
|
| Block maxima (e.g daily max temperature) follow a generalized
| extreme value (GEV) distribution.
|
| One can try to see whether this distribution is stationary or
| not.
|
| Things can get much fancier by e.g. modeling correlations across
| cities but the above is pretty basic.
|
| A great practical intro is:
| https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-1-4471-3675-0
| nope96 wrote:
| from the same site: The US has gone $days since a record high
| temperature
|
| https://pudding.cool/2022/03/weather-map/
| lisper wrote:
| Would be interesting to have the same info for a record low.
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| Or for record high lows ("the low has never been this warm").
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| Given you have 400 samples a day, what is the baseline expected
| days since record high temperature just based on statistical
| variation?
| derbOac wrote:
| Presumably, if this is stationary, wouldn't record highs
| decrease in frequency over time?
| jgeada wrote:
| Yes, if climate was static. It is pretty obvious that it is
| not and the earth is warming.
| inkeddeveloper wrote:
| No, that's the problem. Record highs in single locations
| are being set quite often.
| cc344 wrote:
| I think this is an interesting project, it does seem to present
| the information in a rather biased way. I'm not trying to dispute
| whether things are warmer, but I would like to better understand
| what the underlying data consists of. I know they have 148 years
| of data, so I'm curious how that data was collected even 50 to 70
| years ago let alone 100 years ago. There has to be a change in
| the quality of the data collection over time. It would be
| challenging to fairly compare data from the last 10 or so years
| to a similar timeframe 100 years ago. I would imagine data
| doesn't even exist in some of the cities.
|
| Maybe people who have more expertise in the field or the data
| collection can chime in.
| epolanski wrote:
| > It would be challenging to fairly compare data from the last
| 10 or so years to a similar timeframe 100 years ago.
|
| Why? A thermometer works exactly the same it did 100 years ago.
| For such a simple measurement like temperature I can't think of
| many reasons why measurements from the 30s could be
| significantly different (as in more than fractions).
|
| I also guess that if the data was considered unreliable for any
| reason it would not be used.
| anonymousiam wrote:
| Interesting new site here that lets you explore historic
| temperatures and trends:
| http://realclimatetools.com/apps/graphing/index.html
| rektide wrote:
| University of Maine's Climate Reanalyzer is my trusted,
| respected go to.
|
| They have long time series:
| https://climatereanalyzer.org/reanalysis/monthly_tseries/
|
| They have wonderful daily difference-from-average "anomoly"
| maps: https://climatereanalyzer.org/wx/DailySummary/#t2anom
|
| I really dislike this site you've linked. The whole middle of
| the chart is completely overwhelmed with data points unless you
| zoom way in, until you can only see a decade or so. There's the
| extreme data points of each year that stick out, but what's
| actually happening most of the time is utterly occluded &
| unclear. The data masks rather than informs.
| rangewookie wrote:
| The "story" being told doesn't have a clear through line. I
| didn't understand the context for anything. I also didn't see any
| of the information I wanted to see.
|
| What was the hottest year? What was the year with the most broken
| records? What is the overall trend? It actually told me what the
| hottest day on record was, but there is so much to read I
| completely glazed over and missed it the first time.
| [deleted]
| voz_ wrote:
| This is a very difficult to navigate site. I wish I had the data
| presented almost any other way. Which is a shame, because its a
| cool idea, w/ cool analysis.
|
| You should open source the data.
| [deleted]
| shagie wrote:
| > You should open source the data.
|
| The data isn't theirs to open source (or not).
|
| > Temperature records are collected from ACIS, which tracks
| weather for approximately 400 US cities. ACIS has data from the
| ThreadEx project.
|
| The ThreadEx project is http://threadex.rcc-acis.org
|
| This suggests its using the data from a service that is
| collected from http://www.ncei.noaa.gov which right on the
| front has: Looking for Data?
| [deleted]
| butwhywhyoh wrote:
| Why does this force me to scroll through this like a slideshow?
|
| Anyone else reminded of the bad-old-days when Flash websites were
| common and broke all UI norms?
| ModernMech wrote:
| I think these kinds of sites are made by people who never
| experienced that hell.
| kilovoltaire wrote:
| I assume it's based on the UI of Instagram Stories, which maybe
| feels quite natural for some people (not me so much)
| [deleted]
| paulcole wrote:
| No, I think it's really cool!
|
| Their website, their decision on how to "force" you to
| experience it. Remember, you can always close the tab if it's
| not compelling or interesting to you personally.
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(page generated 2022-05-24 23:00 UTC)