Mapping US Temperature Anomalies

U.S. Daily Temperature Anomalies 2010-2013 is an animated map of unusually high and low recorded temperatures in the United States. The map uses CartoDB's Torque library to animate through the four years of temperature data.

The animated weather patterns which emerge on the map seem to reflect the influence of the Westerlies on the United States. As the animation plays out there appears to be a general west to east movement of these temperature anomalies from 2010-2013.


The U.S. Daily Temperature Anomalies 2010-2013 map uses data from the U.S. Daily Temperature Anomalies 1964-2013 map.  This timeline and map plots temperature anomalies from 2,716 weather stations in the US, which have data going back 50 years.

Each station's daily temperature recordings have been compared to the corresponding monthly distribution. If the temperature at the station fell in the bottom or top 2% on a given day it is labelled an anomaly.

The map animates through the 50 years of temperature anomalies at all 2,716 weather stations. Warm anomalies are show on the map in red and cold anomalies are displayed with blue dots. Beneath the map a graph plots the yearly proportion of warm anomalies to cold anomalies. The graph shows a clear trend towards ever increasing warm anomalies in the United States.