The graphs shown in this tweet from John Kennedy kicked off the idea of a climate change dashboard. However, the data behind those graphs changes very slowly (once a year?). Pierre Richemond and I have been talking about what we might want to see on a dashboard that would be engaging/dynamic enough to warrant a live site. One possible idea would be trying to connect the changing climate to the weather that you perceive locally by showing how temperatures have changed on the current day in your location over the last 100 years, or by offering a time/geographic map of the world showing change in any of these metrics.
What other sorts of information would you want to see on a climate change dashboard?
At Cambridgeshire Climate Emergency (http://camemergency.org), we’re building a network of “Climate Emergency Control Centres” including a “situation map” (http://camemergency.org/map) that can be used to track progress and drive urgent action on zero carbon - ideally through regular daily, weekly and monthly goal-driven conference calls.
What we’d love to see in our situation map dashboard is granular, regularly updated C02 emissions per individual person that could then be aggregated through the normal Google Map zoom in/out methods (similar to what we do for concept mapping at climate.space). The challenge is, however, that things like individual energy meter data are not easily accessible (though we think we can get companies to maybe sign up to a voluntary “Make my energy public” system as some already do that).
So what we’re thinking is some kind of ML algorithm that takes a variety of readily measurable features, eg. socio-economic status, distance from conurbations, temperature, average traffic flow, time of year, etc, and calculates a very broad-brushed C02 emissions figure - that serves as a reliable proxy for actual, detailed C02 personal calculators (which we would use as well to calibrate the thing). That way people can see on a regular basis the “situation map” and change their behaviour - ideally collectively by creating locally grown energy schemes - that radically alter the situation map.
Hi there. I think it’s a great idea. A massively important topic to raise awareness on, it’s too easy for people to ignore. To start with, it would help I think to state exactly what the purpose is of the proposed dashboard, who the intended audience is and to be really clear about what the story is that we’re trying to tell. Without that, it could be easy to throw loads of stuff at it and the message be lost in noise. So, how would you answer those questions… what’s the purpose and story? Who’s the audience? S
Perhaps daily estimated GHG emissions by country. This might help to indicate the impacts of efforts ro reduce emissiins, as well as show which countries aren’t doing their part. A choropleth map could be accompanied by a timeseries line chart to show concentrations of GHG emussions and trends over time.
Hello All, I would like to add to the type of dashboard, in terms of viewing and functionality that we can provide. From past few months I am attending EarthData Webinars conducted by NASA DAAC people, and I was introduced to Giovanni which shows the measurements that one want to see for a particular lat log combination in temporal range. @shayne_miel as pwe my conversation with Peirre on Twitter, he asked if suggestions can be provided as what type of dynamic website should we have for the dashboard. There are many NASA GES DISC Data Visualization tool provided from which we can use or take cues from to prepare this dashboard. Also, I am sure we will be needing processed data and the same can be found on NASA GES DISC website.
I agree @Sjl , we need to have a vision statement and the audience we are trying to target. We need to make a detailed plan of the roll-out stages. In Stage-1 we can target all the Environmental bodies in the Government. Also we need to see which are are creating most damage and try to target them first. Raise awareness among the people of that country first.
I think this can only be possible if we have a video conference to hear everyone’s view to kick this forward and try to build from there.
Totally agree, brylie. This is the biggest challenge we face - having regular emissions data in order to focus targeted actions. There was some talk of using non-climate parameters to provide estimates, ie. feed in income, distance from major cities, etc, and it outputs an estimate (with huge error bars). Perhaps with stuff like external temperature, day of week, etc.
Here is an amazing Greenland Surface Melt Extent Interactive Chart. I think such graphs are the one’s that actually makes a larger impact. It has always been about comparison, the measurement changes w.r.t. to time are the ones that bring significant awareness.
I’d find live or close-to-live data related to energy production or emissions interesting. Such data for Germany is available at https://www.energy-charts.de/power.htm . They even release solar forecasts.
The idea of tipping points is most often discussed at the global scale, where beyond a given concentration things become much worse. Global scale issues aren’t really relevant to most people though. What are the most at risk species / ecosystems / services at someone’s location? Are impacts being felt now? If not, what is first on the chopping block?
I have been wondering if it might be possible to get real-time grid usage and CO2/Kwh intensity stats on a local level, If you could put gas usage into the mix even better.
For instance, for a village, town, part of city so that the community can see when it makes sense when to use appliances, charge cars, batteries etc, or when to avoid usage, and also track to see how the community does over time so you get people motivated and see actual changes.
Do utility companies even publish the data in a way that it could be queried in such a way?
Hi Robert. National grid have quite a good public API for regional level carbon intensity, this is the same feed that I believe Octopus use for the carbon intensity levels.
Thanks for the link. Very useful. Regional is rather larger than I was hoping for community tracking their own power use, but super very useful for guiding when to consume or save power.
Do you know of any Phone apps that report this info?
A map or leaderboard of CO2-e / kWh produced for electric power. New Zealand is likely at or near the lowest level globally at 0.0977 kg CO2-e / kWh (see page 9 of Measuring Emissions) due to having 80% renewable energy sources (hydro/geothermal/wind).
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