Is Your Hometown Getting Hotter?

It can be difficult to visualize global warming in a way that makes immediate sense. The New York Times has successfully achieved this with their new data visualization How Much Hotter Is Your Hometown Than When You Were Born?.

Just enter the name of your hometown and the year you were born into the New York Times' interactive. You will then be told how many days in a year, on average, the temperature reached 32 degrees in your hometown in the year that you were born. You will also be told how many days on average reach that temperature now. In case you can't work out how much hotter your hometown has become a line chart shows you how the number of days of extreme heat have increased over recent years. The Times will also you tell you how many extremely hot days you can expect when you reach 80 years of age.

Just in case you think that it is just your hometown that is getting hotter the article continues by presenting you with a 3D globe. This globe shows how many extremely hot days above 32 degrees locations around the world will experience by the end of this century. At first the globe highlights the increasing number of extremely hot days in your hometown. It then progresses to show how temperatures will increase elsewhere around the world.