Sunday, September 22, 2013

Temperature cycles annually

Thinking to myself the last week or so how it would be cool to see hourly temperatures plotted over the course of the year, like a daily heartbeat or pulse, and see how the highs and lows shift over the course of the year.

Sort of like this graph, which smooshes together 365 days into one segment:

The daily low (blue) and high (red) temperature during the last 12 months with the area between them shaded gray and superimposed over the corresponding averages (thick lines), and with percentile bands (inner band from 25th to 75th percentile, outer band from 10th to 90th percentile). The bar at the top of the graph is red where both the daily high and low are above average, blue where they are both below average, and white otherwise.
Or this one, from the same page, which shows the temperature at points of the day across the year 2012-2013:

The full year of hourly temperature reports with the days of the year on the horizontal and the hours of the day on the vertical. The hourly temperature measurement is color coded into meaningful temperature bands: frigid is purple (below 15°F), freezing is blue (15°F to 32°F), cold is dark green (32°F to 50°F), cool is light green (50°F to 65°F), comfortable is yellow (65°F to 75°F), warm is light red (75°F to 85°F), hot is medium red (85°F to 100°F), sweltering is dark red (above 100°F), and missing data is pink.
The latter image shows noon to 6:00 p.m. as warm to hot to sweltering between mid-April and early October, with cool temperatures from noon to 6:00 p.m. during November to late February.

Compare this to where I grew up : o \

 The full year of hourly temperature reports with the days of the year on the horizontal and the hours of the day on the vertical. The hourly temperature measurement is color coded into meaningful temperature bands: frigid is purple (below 15°F), freezing is blue (15°F to 32°F), cold is dark green (32°F to 50°F), cool is light green (50°F to 65°F), comfortable is yellow (65°F to 75°F), warm is light red (75°F to 85°F), hot is medium red (85°F to 100°F), sweltering is dark red (above 100°F), and missing data is pink.

You can tell at a glance it's a different latitude: 38.6 degrees versus 46.6 degrees makes a significant difference.

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