The Globle Flight Time Map

I could have breakfast in London and be in New York in time for lunch. According to the Approximate Flight Time Map a plane journey from London to New York would take just under 8 hours. If I factor in the time difference then I could leave London at 8am and be in New York before midday (EDT). 

Conversely if I want to travel to Sydney then I won't arrive before dinner-time tomorrow evening. The flight to Sydney is 21 hours long and the 11 hour time difference means that if I leave London at 8am today I won't arrive before 7pm tomorrow (Australian Eastern Daylight Time).

The Approximate Flight Time Map can show you the estimated time it would take to fly from any location on Earth to anywhere else on the planet. Double-click on a location on the map and red isolines will show you the number of hours it would take to fly anywhere along each line. These isolines are roughly distanced about 1,660 km apart. This distance corresponds to approximately two hours of flight time in a commercial plane. 

The flight times suggested by the map seem to me to be a little shorter than the flight-times suggested by Google. Obviously the actual flight time would depend on a number of different factors, including the wind conditions, the speed of the plane and the flight path taken by the plane.

The 2023 Submarine Cable Globe

Every year the telecommunications company Telegeography releases a new, updated version of its Submarine Cable map. This map shows all the undersea telecommunication cables which carry data around the world.The 2023 Submarine Cable Map is now available. 

Subsea cables carry telecommunication signals under the oceans, communicating information between different countries and regions of the world. In the 19th Century the first submarine cables were laid to carry telegraphy traffic. In the 21st Century submarine cables carry digital data. This includes all our telephone and Internet data.

This year's version of Telegeography's map plots 529 cable systems and 1,444 landing stations. The 2023 Submarine Cable map is available as a free download or you can purchase a wall map for $250. The landing site for the 2023 Submarine Cable Map features two interactive versions of the map. One of these is a Cesium powered 3D globe of the map. The other is a Mapbox story map which takes you on a guided tour of this edition's many inset maps. 

The 2023 version of the Submarine Cable Map includes a number of these inset maps which provide a close-up view of country landing stations and the cable systems which they serve around the world. The map also features a couple of Olaus Magnus inspired sea monsters and depictions of some of the cable laying and cable maintenance ships which service the global telecommunications network of undersea cables.

Each year's edition of the Telegeography Submarine Cable Map has a different design. You can explore Telegeography's Submarine Cable Maps for previous years just by changing the year in the map's URL. For example, one of my favorite Telegeography maps can be found at http://submarine-cable-map-2015.telegeography.com/. This 2015 map was inspired by medieval and renaissance cartography and features a vintage map style containing sea monsters, cartouches and border illustrations.

The City of Women Subway Map

Barcelona, like New York and London, now has a reimagined subway map designed to celebrate and recognise the lives of some of the city's most remarkable women. The Barcelona City of Women subway map highlights the extraordinary contribution of women to the Catalan capital.

On the Ciutat de Dones map every station on Barcelona's metro network and all the stops on the city's railway network has been replaced with the name of a woman. The map is a joint project of Barcelona City Council and Haymarket Books. An advisory editorial board decided on which women to celebrate on the map with the help of a number of organizations and women groups based in Barcelona.

If you click on the name of a woman on the interactive version of the map you can learn more about her achievements and why she has been recognised by the Ciutat de Dones project. In total 153 women have been recognised on the map (limited by the number of stations). Among the women celebrated on the map are the opera singer Montserrat Caballe, philosopher Simone Weil, and director Carla Simón.

The City of Women London Tube Map is a reimagining of the iconic London Underground map, in which all the station names have been replaced with the names of notable women.For example Swiss Cottage station has been renamed for the poet Sylvia Plath and Hyde Park Corner has been renamed for Emmeline Pankhurst, the leader of the UK suffragette movement. 

The map, released for International Women's Day, is the culmination of a project led by the actress Emma Watson, the journalist Reni Eddo-Lodge and the writer Rebecca Solnit.The City of Women London Tube Map was inspired by a similar map created by Rebecca Solnit, Molly Roy and Lia Tjandra for New York. Their City of Women New York City Subway Wall Map replaces the names of all the stations on the New York Subway with the names of notable woman who have a New York connection. 

You can buy a copy of the City of Women New York City Subway Wall Map (20 x 20 Inches) from Haymarket Books.

The interactive version of the City of Women London Tube Map allows you to click on a station name to learn more about the woman celebrated at that station. Many of the women shown on the map have a personal connection with the area where they have been placed on the map. For example the singer Amy Winehouse replaces Camden Town on the map, because she lived and regularly performed in this north London neighborhood. You can also buy poster sized prints of the London map from Bookshop.org or Waterstones.

One reason why the Barcelona, New York and London Subway maps have had to be reimagined to celebrate the achievements of women is because women are so rarely recognized by having squares, roads or stations named for them - unlike men. You can see this imbalance in the recognition of men and women in city road-names and place-names in the maps listed on the Maps Mania post The Sexist Streets of the World.

Earthquakes - Global Risk & Hazard Maps

The Global Earthquake Model Foundation is a non-profit organization working to assess and help manage the risk from earthquakes and seismic activity around the globe. Part of its mission is to is assess and share open data on earthquake risks and hazards.

The Global Earthquake Model Foundation has released two interactive maps, the Global Seismic Risk Map and the Global Seismic Hazard Map, which can be used to explore the risk from earthquakes at locations around the world. The estimated hazards are based on the foundation's own OpenQuake engine, an open-source seismic hazard and risk model.

I think the main difference between the two earthquake maps is that the hazard map visualizes earthquake hazards based on seismic faults around the world, while the risk map is based on likely damage and risk assessments. In other words the hazard map shows the estimated ground effect of an earthquake and the risk map shows the potential damage to buildings at that location from seismic activity.

Global earthquake hazards can also be seen on ResourceWatch's Global Earthquake Hazard Frequency and Distribution map. This interactive map visualizes all earthquake activity around the world, from 1976 to 2002, exceeding 4.5 on the Richter scale.

You can also explore historic earthquake data on the Seismic Explorer. The Seismic Explorer interactive map visualizes 40 years of earthquake activity on Earth, including information on the magnitude, depth, and location of each recorded quake. The map uses data about recent seismic activity from the United States Geological Survey (USGS), and data from the Smithsonian Institution Global Volcanism Program on historical seismic activity around the world.

The Worst Air Pollution in America

Bakersfield in California has the worst air pollution in the United States. The second worst air pollution can be found in South Los Angeles. In South Los Angeles the dangerous levels of particulate matter 2.5 are caused by freeways and toxic factories. Bakersfield however is an agricultural community. The fine particulars in Bakersfield's air emanate instead from farming chemicals and truck fumes which are then trapped by the surrounding mountains.

You can find out how bad the air pollution is in your town on The Guardian's new Air Pollution Hotspot interactive map. Enter an address into The Guardian's map and you can view a choropleth map which visualizes the levels of particulate matter 2.5 at that location. 

The Guardian's map shows estimated modeled levels of air pollution across the United States. These estimations are based on the location of contributing air pollution factors such as roads, elevation levels & whether an area is urban or rural. The map also uses satellite-derived estimates of air pollution and, where available, actual air pollution measurements.

In an article which accompanies the map, US neighborhoods with more people of color suffer worse air pollution, The Guardian reveals that across the country "the underlying variable that is most predictive (of air pollution) is systemic racism". It has found that nearly every area with dangerously high levels of air pollution has higher than average percentages of Black families living in them. 

One reason for this is that black neighborhoods are often used as the sites for heavy polluting roads and industry. For example The Guardian shows how in Atlanta the map of air pollution looks remarkably similar to early-20th Century federal redlining maps. In the years that followed redlining "freeways and polluting facilities tended to be sited in those areas because the minority communities that lived there didn’t have the political or social clout to stop their construction".

Stockholm is Twice as Sexist as Havana

It is a very sad fact that sexual inequality exists in just about every country of the world. The disparity in the number of streets named for men and the number of streets named for women is perhaps not the most malign form of that inequality but it is extremely pervasive. It signifies how undervalued and unrecognized women and women's achievements are in all areas of society. 

According to Geochicas' analysis Havana is one of the least sexist cities in the world in the area of street nomenclature. Their interactive map Las Calles de las Mujeres explores the ratio of streets named for men and women in a number of cities in Spain, Argentina, Mexico, Bolivia, Cuba, Paraguay, Peru, Italy and Uruguay. Of these Havana has the highest percent of streets named after women. In Havana 37.8% of streets named for people are named after women and 62.2% are named for men. However, even though Havana has a higher ratio of streets named for women than all the other cities on Las Calles de las Mujeres, the number of streets named for men still far out-weighs the number of streets named for women.

According to Mapping Diversity in Europe the city of Stockholm has one of the highest percentages of streets named for women. In Stockholm 19.5% of streets are named for women (out of the streets dedicated to individuals). That makes it just under half as sexist as Havana - but still less sexist than every other European city featured on Mapping Diversity. 

Mapping Diversity has now mapped the streets named for men and women in 30 European cities. If you open one of these maps you can view all the streets in the city which have been named after a woman. Each of these streets is color-coded to indicate if the woman was honored for her role in politics, culture, religion or 'other'.

The EqualStreetNames project has also analyzed the inequality in street names in 50 cities around the world (including San Francisco, Berlin, Brussels and Vienna). According to their analysis San Pablo in the Philippines is one of the least sexist cities, with 22.86% of the streets named after people being named for women. In comparison only 5.88% of gendered streets in San Francisco have been named for women. 

The EqualStreetNames project has also found a number of European cities which are less sexist than Stockholm. These include Freiburg im Breisgau in Germany (with 22.47% of streets named for people named after women) and Bolzano, Italy (20.33% of streets named for people named for women).

The Map of Home Heating

The Washington Post has been exploring how Americans heat their homes. Their are four main energy sources used by Americans to heat their homes: electricity, natural gas, propane and fuel oil. Which one is used is mainly determined by geographical and historical reasons.

In How Americans Heat Their Homes the Post has produced a map which shows that fuel oil (in red) is the most used source of home heating in the Northeast. In the South electricity (yellow) dominates. In the Midwest natural gas (dark blue) is the biggest source of home heating, while propane (light blue) is used mainly in rural areas.

The Post's article on home heating includes an interactive map which you can use to see how homes are mainly heated in your town. On this map each census tract is colored to show the main source of heating used in local homes. Hover over a census tract on the map and you can view a percentage breakdown on the four main sources of home heating used in that tract. The article also includes a static map for each of electricity, natural gas, propane and fuel oil showing where each is used across the country.

Sea Ice in Antarctica

A new interactive sea ice map has been released which can be used to help plan sea voyages and to aid climate change research in the Antarctic. Nilas -The Southern Ocean Mapping Platform uses historical and near real-time data on sea ice & sea-surface temperatures in Antarctica and also allows you to explore both the latest data and historical data on chlorophyll concentrations (a proxy for phytoplankton production).

The Australian Antarctic Division developed the map to support both their research into Antarctica and their operational activities. The map includes sea ice extent and sea surface temperatures dating back to 1981 and chlorophyll from 1998. The data allows the AAD to use the map to help plan marine-science voyages. The map can help scientists to understand the historical conditions during the planned dates of a voyage and to reveal the best time to visit a location to achieve a mission's objective.

The map itself uses the Leaflet JavaScript mapping library. My guess is that Nilas uses a custom made polar projection map of Antarctica. This custom polar projection could then be displayed using the Proj4Leaflet plugin for map projections not natively supported by Leaflet. Nilas also appears to have used the leaflet-panel-layers plugin to help build the map's menu panels. 

If you are interested in exploring historic climate and weather data at the other end of the Earth then you might also be interested in SOAC's maps of the Arctic. The National Snow and Ice Data Center has created a series of interactive maps which visualize Satellite Observations of Arctic Change. The maps allow you to see how sea ice, snow cover and frozen ground have all been shrinking during the 21st Century. Other maps plot air temperature changes in the Arctic and the changes to Arctic vegetation.

Each of the NSIDC interactive maps uses NASA satellite data and research to plot changes to the Arctic from 1979 to 2015. The maps allow you to observe the data for each year in this period to observe how global warming has affected the ecological systems of the Arctic. Global warming is causing observable changes to ecological systems in the Arctic. Air temperatures in the Arctic are rising and sea ice extent is declining. Even Arctic vegetation is changing with tundra being replaced by shrubs.

Racial Dot Density Maps

In the United States there are a number of interactive maps which use census data to visualize the population density and racial mix of local populations. For example CNN's Race & Ethnicity map uses colored dots to show the racial diversity within every census tract in the country.

In the UK the Office for National Statistics has now released a Dot Density Prototype map for the 2021 UK census. This map allows you to visualize a whole range of household data in dot density format. The data available includes ethnic groups. Which means you can explore for yourself the racial density of different ethnic groups in any neighborhood in the country (the screenshot above looks at the density of ethnic groups in the city of Birmingham).

What is really impressive about the ONS map is the range of household data that you can explore. For example if I look at my census tract in East London I can see that 55% of the local houses are occupied by just 1 person, over 38% of the local population were born overseas, 42% don't own a car, and only 7.8% don't own a passprt. 

Also See

The Racial Dot of Brazil - 190 million dots colored by race 

Dot Map of South Africa - a racial dot map, with options to also view first languages and household income

Rising Sea Stripes

NPR has been investigating how rising sea levels are causing coastal erosion in the city of Saint-Louis, Senegal. 75% of Senegal's coastline is at risk of coastal erosion and, in recent years, some neighborhoods of Saint-Louis have already experienced devastating floods. In Disappearing Saint-Louis NPR has used a series of maps to show how Saint-Louis is located precariously between the Atlantic Ocean and the Senegal River, and is dangerously exposed to rising seas and coastal erosion.  

One map in the NPR article uses colored lines to show the median position of the shoreline for every year since 2000. This map provides a fantastic visualization of how coastal erosion is increasingly encroaching on the city. The colored lines, overlaid on top of an aerial view of the Saint-Louis shoreline, clearly show how the shoreline is rapidly eroding. The darker lines show the median position of the shoreline in the earliest years and the lighter lines represent the sea's position in more recent years. The obvious progression of the median position of the shoreline up the beach over time provides a stark visualization of the precarious position that the residents of Saint-Louis now find themselves in.