Two Degrees Warmer

In 2015 countries from around the world signed the Paris Agreement, an agreement to try to keep global warming below 2 degrees Celsius by the year 2100. In 2019 many locations across the United States have already surpassed 2 degrees of warming. Two years ago President Trump announced that the United States will withdraw from the Paris Agreement.

The Washington Post has today released a detailed examination of where climate change is having the most visible effects in the United States. In 2°C: Beyond the Limit - Extreme climate change has arrived in America the Post uses historical temperature data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration temperature to map where temperatures in the U.S. have already exceeded two degrees Centigrade.

According to the Post's analysis seventy-one counties have already experienced global heating of 2-degree Celsius. The Post's story includes a more detailed look at some of the regions of America which are experiencing extreme global warming and the effect that this warming is having on local environments. In particular the Post's story concentrates on the North East, where extreme warming has led to rising seas, loss of land, warmer winters and many other environmental problems.

Animated Wind Maps

Animated wind maps have become very popular over the last few years. Earth: and Windy are just two examples of interactive maps which use weather data from the Global Forecast System to create real-time animated maps of global wind conditions.

US Wind Patterns is another interesting example of an animated wind map. However US Wind Patterns uses historical weather data to visualize the last 72 hours of wind activity in the United States. The map shows the wind direction, speed and temperature measurements from 1200 weather stations on top of an interactive map. Press play and you can watch the changing strength and direction of the wind over the last three days as the map animates through the wind data hour by hour.

US Wind Patterns was made with PhiloGL, a WebGL library for creating data visualizations. The library's demo page includes a number of other map visualizations, including this interesting 3D globe of World Temperature Changes 1880-2011.

Where's the Sun?

Under the Sun is an animated map which shows the daily journey of the Sun as the Earth rotates around its own axis. The map shows the exact point on Earth right now where the sun is at its Zenith. The map updates in real-time. So as you watch the map the sun slowly travels westwards across the land or sea.

Under the Sun also includes information on the current time and the latitude and longitude of the current map view. That's it. Under the Sun is a very simple map but it can show some beautiful aerial views of the Earth and watching the slowly shifting landscape under the sun can be very calming.


You can see where on Earth it is currently daytime and where it is nighttime on the Night and Day on Earth interactive map. This map uses a simple map overlay to show where there is currently daylight around the globe and where the world is in darkness.

Night and Day on Earth uses the Leaflet.Terminator plug-in for Leaflet.js. If you need to show where it is currently night and day around the world then you can use the plug-in to add a night and day layer to your own Leaflet maps.

The Impossible Burger Real-Time Map

Imitation meat by Impossible Food is inexplicably very popular. As a vegetarian of 40 years I struggle to see the attraction of processed food which has been designed to taste like meat. However there are obviously many people who do want to eat fake meat. In fact so many people want Impossible Burgers that it has become nearly impossible to find an Impossible Burger.

Which is why Bloomberg has created the Impossible Burger Real-Time Map. Enter your location into Bloomberg's map and you can instantly find all the nearby fast food restaurants which currently have stocks of the Impossible Burger. Restaurants where Impossible Burgers are available are marked in green and restaurants where they are unavailable are colored red.

Users of the map can update the information shown on the map. If you are viewing the map on a phone then you can share your location with the map and report the availability of Impossible Burgers (or their unavailability). The Bloomberg report accompanying the map also includes information on all the latest restaurants and fast food chains which are selling the Impossible Burger.

How Drug Crime Went Rural

The BBC has published an interactive map which they say visualizes how drug crime is moving from the inner-cities to smaller commuter towns in England & Wales. The map is largely being used to illustrate an interesting theory which is being called 'County Lines'. County Lines is what the police are calling a trend by drug gangs to expand from cities into nearby small towns, using teenagers as drug mules.

The interactive map in Drug Crime Mapped uses different colors to show where drug crime has increased or decreased in England & Wales. The BBC believe that the map shows that drug crime has fallen significantly in city centres, while at the same time it has risen sharply in many smaller towns and villages.

I don't usually post maps about crime to Maps Mania. This is largely due to the huge qualitative problems with crime data. Increases and decreases in crime figures can be hugely affected by how that data is reported and collected. Crime statistics can also be affected by sudden changes in police and government policies towards different areas of crime.

Because of the UK's government's austerity programme the police in England have suffered budget cuts for the last 8 years. This means that the UK police have had to carefully target their resources. Personally I would be very wary of the claim that drug crime has fallen 'significantly' in city centres. The definition of drug crime in the BBC report appears to be "offences involving either the possession or supply of illegal drugs". The fall in drug crimes in major cities could feasibly be due, at least partly, to the fact that the police have less officers on the streets, or because inner-city police forces have been targeting scarce resources on other areas of crime. Conversely the increases in drug-crime in smaller towns could be due to the police in those areas identifying drug-crime as an area in which to concentrate local resources.

Mapping Hong Kong Police in Real-Time

Protesters in Hong Kong have widely been using mobile technology in order to try and stay one step ahead of the police. For example the Telegram messaging app has proved very popular with demonstrators in Hong Kong. This is largely due to its security, the ability of users to permanently delete messages and the ease with which group chats can be established and used by groups of protesters.

Another new application being used by protesters in Hong Kong is a live real-time map being used to report the presence of the police. HKmap.live is a crowdsourced map which appears to be designed to report and show the live position of the police in Hong Kong. On the map different emojis are being used to show the location of the police across the city.

Using the map you can report the presence of the police at a location simply by clicking on that location on the map. However reporting privileges are password protected. The instructions appear to suggest that you need Telegram authentication to add data to the map. The instructions also suggest that there is some informal fact-checking taking place on reports and that suspicious users of the map will be banned from reporting to the map.

During some of the biggest protests in Hong Kong Telegram has suffered from distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. Presumably the Chinese authorities have attempted to disrupt Telegram's service and take it offline in order to stop it being used by protesters. HKmap.live was released on August 4th and there were over 10,000 users on its first day. Perhaps its real measure of success will come when the Chinese authorities start trying to take it offline.

Route Planning in the Ancient World

Travelling from London to Rome in the 2nd Century would have taken around 64 days, according to Omnes Viae. Omnes Viae: Itinerarium Romanum is a route planner that lets you navigate the Roman Empire using the roads and shipping lanes available to the ancient Romans.

Omnes Viae is based on an ancient Roman map known as the 'Tabula Peutingeriana' and allows you to plan a route that contains all the main roads and cities of the Roman Empire. Unfortunately Omnes Viae appears to have incurred excessive Google Maps API charges. All the map tiles are now stamped with an ugly 'for development purposes only' message. However the route planner still works and you can still have a lot of fun playing Cesar and planning your Roman military campaigns.


If you want to navigate the early Islamic world then you can use the al-Ṯurayyā Project interactive map. The al-Ṯurayyā Project is a gazetteer and geospatial model of the early Islamic world. The gazetteer includes over 2,000 early Islamic place-names.

The project also includes a path-finding tool which allows you to find routes between any two locations. For example in the early days of Islam it would have taken you around 17 days to travel from Cairo (Fustat) to Damascus (Dimashq). A much longer journey would be from Morocco to India. According to the al-Ṯurayyā Project a journey from Morocco to India would have taken you around 260 days (or around 8 and half months).

LA Donations to the Democrats

Last week the New York Times published Detailed Maps of the Donors Powering the 2020 Democratic Campaigns. These maps reveal where in the country each of the Democratic hopefuls have raised the most money. The Los Angeles Times has now taken a more detailed look at where the $13 million donated to Democratic challengers in Los Angeles County has come from and where it is going.

Which Democrat is Your LA Bloc Backing includes an interactive map which colors individual blocs in Los Angeles County to show which Democratic challenger has received the most in donations in each bloc. If you hover over individual blocs on the map you can view how much money was donated to each of the candidates. Overall Kamala Harris has raised the most money in the county. She has raised more than twice the amount raised by Bernie Sanders. Joe Biden has received just over a third of the total received by Kamala Harris.

The LA Times has also created individual maps for each of the Democratic challengers showing how much money they received in each bloc in Los Angeles County. These individual maps show that Kamala Harris has received a lot of her donations from wealthy Westside areas. Bernie Sanders on the other hand is less reliant on wealthy backers and has received lots of smaller donations more evenly spread across the whole county.

Last week the LA Times also published a national interactive map showing Where the 2020 Democrats raised the most money. This map got a little ignored in the very popular response to the NYT's similar national map of donations to the Democratic challengers. These national maps reveal that Bernie Sanders has received the most in political donations across the whole of the country.

Climbing Mountains in Street View

The Zugspitze is Germany's highest mountain. The mountain was first climbed way back in 1820. Now you can climb the mountain yourself using Google Maps Street View.

Brothers David and Phil Schmidt spent two weeks hauling panoramic cameras, tripods and GPS devices up the 10,000 foot mountain in order to provide an incredible online Street View tour of the Zugspitze. You can explore the results of their amazing panoramic photography and virtually ascend the mountain yourself on Zugspitze 360°.


Thanks to all the hard work done by David and Phil climbing the Zugspitze virtually is very easy. You can navigate the thousands of Street View images captured of the Zugspitze in a number of different ways. If you are feeling intrepid you can start at the beginning of the climb and use the forward and back arrows in the Street View images to methodically climb the mountain in sequence. As you progress through the stunning panoramic images of the Zugspitze you can also learn more about the mountain from a number of audio guides dotted along the route.

If you are feeling less intrepid and feel the need for a shortcut then you can always use the quick links which are provided to skip forward to different locations on the tour. If you are very impatient, you can just skip straight to the summit to experience the amazing view from the very top of Zugspitze.

If you want to learn more about how this interactive mountain experience was created then you can read David's guest post on the Google Cloud Blog, How two developers reached new heights with Google Maps Platform.


You can also explore the Everest region using Google Maps Street View. A few years ago Google teamed up with Apa Sherpa (a Sherpa mountaineer who holds the world record for reaching the summit of Mount Everest 21 times) and the Nepalese nonprofit organization Story Cycle in order to provide panoramic images of the Himalayas.

During a 10-day trek through the Khumbu region with Apa Sherpa Google managed to capture Street Views of mountain trails and a number of Sherpa villages. The best way to explore this Street View imagery is to visit the Khumba map on Google Treks.


The Khumba site on Google Treks includes some lovely hand-drawn maps of the featured villages. Each of the maps include map markers which lead to Street Views captured on Google's 10-day trek. These include Street View imagery of monasteries, temples, trekker's lodges and of course some wonderful scenery of the Himalayas.


The 3,000 foot vertical face of El Capitan in Yosemite Valley is one of rock climbings biggest challenges. It is even more challenging when you are carrying large Street View cameras. But that didn't deter experienced climbers Lynn Hill, Alex Honnold and Tommy Caldwell.


These three climbers dragged Google's Street View cameras all the way to the top of El Capitan, capturing some extraordinary imagery on their journey. The best way to explore this rock-climbing Street View is on this Behind the Scenes special. El Capitan, Yosemite: Behind the Scenes is a great presentation of this extraordinary Street View imagery. As you scroll up the page you can view the locations of the Street View panoramas, superimposed upon the face of El Capitan.

Click on the 'explore' buttons that appear on your screen and you can dive into the interactive imagery captured from the climb. The Street Views themselves contain points of information about the climb and the mountain. They also include sound-clips and video which explain more about El Capitan and its history.

Fly to the Winter Sun

If you've ever got sick of the relentless cold and wished to find a little winter sun or dreamed of escaping the insistent heat of a long hot summer then you might like Routitude. Routitude is a flight search engine which can find you flights based on your weather preferences.

Enter your departing airport and your month of travel into Routitude and it will find you flight destinations based on your preferred range of temperature and precipitation. Using a slide control tool you can set the kind of temperatures that you want on your vacation and Routitude will show you all the flight destinations around the world which normally have those temperatures during your month of travel.

An interactive map will display all the locations around the world which fit your weather preferences. You can then simply click on any of these locations to check the available airlines and even click through to book a flight.


Another factor which you might want to consider when looking for a flight is the price. Luckily three researchers at MIT Senseable's Lab in Singapore have created an interactive map which shows the cheapest flight to every city in the world on any given date from your nearest airport. Using the Great Escape map you can search for any destination across the globe and find the cheapest flights for when you want to travel.

Enter a point of departure into the Great Escape and the interactive map will show you the live prices of the cheapest return flight to each and every city in the world from your nearest airport. To discover the cost of a return flight to any destination you just need to hover over its marker on the map. If you click on a city marker you can view the entire list of flights to that city. The map also includes options which allow you to filter the flights shown by weather, price, region, direct or indirect flights and whether you need a visa or not.

The flight price data shown on the map comes from the Skyscanner API and Kiwi API. If you want to try an alternative to Routitude and Great Escape you could try Google Flights, Kiwi.com or skiplagged.