Hometown Hot, Over The Years

It's no surprise to anyone that great content comes from the New York Times. This September, they created an interesting interactive entitled "How Much Hotter Is Your Hometown Than When You Were Born?" It's premise: to showcase how "human-induced climate change" (their words!) has caused a rise over time in the number of above-90°F days.

It's amazing how much factual data and science can tell you.

I did it for my hometown of Decatur, Illinois (along with a half dozen other cities including where I now live in Maryland) and found it somewhat shocking to see the data and trends. (It was especially noticeable here on a 90°F day as I sit and type this in the shade of my patio umbrella.) More information and projection is revealed as you continue to scroll down. Every city I did showed the same basic upwards trend, though the numbers differed significantly the closer to the equator the city fell.

This interactive would also be an excellent teaching tool for students, giving them a variety of cities to investigate.

You need to go to the New York Times interactive (click here) and plug in some of your favorite cities, hometown and otherwise. To see the data is remarkable. To see the projected numbers for when you are 80 years old might startle you. No matter what, it will cause you to take pause.

Images are screenshots from my data placed within this interactive: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/08/30/climate/how-much-hotter-is-your-hometown.html