Visualizing Climate Change Data

After looking over and studying the data that was handed to us, we immediately noticed a trend. As the global CO₂ levels go up, the tornado count in the US gets gradually higher too. While brainstorming for ideas on what our graph should look like, and what twist we could add to it, we decided on a sideways graph that would represent the side of a tornado and show the impacts of tornadoes by showing tornado damage. As the CO₂ levels on the earth go up, the climate will get warmer. When the climate gets warmer, the wind speeds get higher, causing more tornadoes.

Sean and Emery

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We created this piece of art to bring attention to the topic of rising lake temperatures in the United States. We wanted to incorporate the fish in bad condition to grab the attention of the consumers of this art because we felt it was a good way to raise interest and concern to the topic. Fish and other wildlife are not able to adjust to the changing environment of their habitats causing lots of them to be in bad condition. We have a graph in our art piece that shows the earth’s surface temperatures average compared to the 20th century average. We also have another graph that shows thermometers at high temperatures in different areas in the U.S.

Sofia and Gaya

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Our artwork is showing the increase of Lyme Disease cases as a result of climate change. The idea of our painting was to illustrate that over time, as the global surface temperature increased, so did the number of people with Lyme Disease. The people with Lyme Disease are represented with the green shirts, whereas the uninfected are represented as wearing blue shirts. Over time, as the deviation from the average surface temperature increases, the icicles increase in size because of the warmer temperatures and greater rate of melting, and the percentage of people with Lyme Disease increases. We incorporated both line graphs- the Lyme Disease incidence is represented by the black line with the ticks as the data points. The green ticks represent alive ticks, and the brown ticks represent dead ticks. When the data sets intersect, the ticks are brown, whereas when they don’t, the ticks are green. The deviation from the long-term average number of unfrozen days is represented by the icicles. The thermometers at the top illustrate the increase in temperature. Ticks can only survive in warm weather, and as the number of unfrozen days increases, the number of frozen days decreases, and hence the ticks survive longer. Ticks transmit Lyme Disease, and when their life span is longer, they have more opportunities to bite people and infect them. This data is important because it is important to recognize that unless climate change stops or slows significantly, Lyme Disease cases will continue to rise drastically, and this will be detrimental to everyone.

Frankie and Astrid

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To represent the effect of an elongated growing season on both our world and the natural world, we presented it as a scale. On one side of the scale, we illustrated crops and produce, surrounded by gratified wildlife - in this case, birds. On the other side of the scale lies a depiction of invasive plant species, to the illustrated confusion and dismay of the birds.

The scale and its components portray the balance between the beneficial and harmful consequences of a prolonged growing season. This representation is set against the graph of the deviation of the growing season from a long-term average, by year.

Underneath this portion of the painting is artwork of cars and factories, their respective clouds of smoke increasing further into the carbon emissions graph - the concept here being that the carbon emissions are fueling the change in growing season.

Our primary materials in creating this piece were watercolor, felt tip pens, and colored pencils.

Sana and Meredith

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We are trying to show how bird migrations are affected by climate change. Due to climate change birds are required to migrate further upward toward the North than they have in past years. Our poster is showing these migration habits from 1965 to 2013. Our poster is also showing bloom data and this connects to bird migrations because the food sources are changing and so when the plants bloom sooner, further north, the birds can stay in the north for longer. We chose to show the temperature change by using an ombre effect in the background. The Flowery vine at the bottom is representing how much sooner or later plants are blooming. You can see the amount sooner or later in the left vertical axis (days). The graph in the center is showing the bird migrations, you can see how far based on the right vertical axis (miles).

Abbie and Sumedha

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Through our artwork, we tried to demonstrate how the Great Lakes’ ice is melting sooner (Lake Superior, specifically). We did this by painting ice (we did our best!) over a lake, using the graph as a border. Although the graphs weren’t very clear in representing the decrease over time, we tried to reinforce the idea by drawing cracks in the ice. And yes, that’s not the same as melting, but we thought it was a simple, effective way to say “Hey! Something bad is happening!”

More on that: We glued cut-outs of skaters onto the ice, and when the ice begins to “crack,” the skaters vanish. This shows how people are no longer able to participate in as many recreational activities as they used to.

Also, we added cut-outs of fish, and as the timeline shifts to more recent eras, fish skeletons begin to outnumber the fish themselves. This is because as the ice melts sooner, the lakes are becoming overgrown with algae, disturbing the fragile ecosystem that the fish require to thrive (the fish aren’t necessarily dying—we just used skeletons so the difference was clear).

Finally, overlaid is a graph of the average annual temperature difference from freezing (F). There is a clear correlation between them, too. When this graph goes up, the other (days of annual ice cover) goes down. And when this graph goes down, the other goes up.

Jeffrey and Teo

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Our artwork displays two graphs of data, one about the arctic sea ice melt season and the other about ocean heat content. The arctic sea ice graph takes the form of a sea wrapping around half of the glacier. The ocean heat content graph also takes the form of the sea, but it combined with the bottom line of the arctic sea ice melt season graph makes a glacier that is slowly melting, getting smaller and smaller. The red lines correlate to the arctic sea ice melt season, while the blue line correlates with the ocean heat content rise. You can see how the melt season is growing wider, so there is more time for arctic sea ice to melt. This is directly correlated with our second graph, ocean heat content. As one goes up, so does the other. The heat content greatly increases from 1995 to 2020, which is when the melt season grew. This is important to realize because it impacts humans, other animals, and our planet. We show this with an arctic polar bear who on the left is content and eating a fish, but on the right is starving and almost falling off of the cliff.

Michael and Daniel

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We created this artwork in an attempt to show what is causing an increase of floods and the effects that these floods will eventually have on our planet. You may notice that the first graph includes trees on each side, and that the bars are colored blue. This is to represent healthy trees with the water below

Sea level on one side, however when you go to the right you can see the water starts to flood and the trees have been drowned. We also decided to make one side of the painting sunny and the other with gray storm clouds to emulate the severe storms that cause flooding. Lastly we included a house being flooded in our second graph, using the same idea of the graph line being water. Along with the artistic elements, we included data about average sea surface temperature and annual CO₂ emissions plus surface temperature which we believe directly correlates and affects the annual flooding data. While looking at this piece we hope that you understand the ways that CO₂ emissions can eventually cause coastal flooding. These floods can have dire consequences. Using this poster we hope to spark your interest in saving our planet.

Sarah and Chelsea

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In our artwork, we strived to show how the CO₂ being emitted into the atmosphere has severe effects on marine life. To show this we added three data sets. The top data set that has been “Bejeweled” shows the CO2 levels from the past 50 years. You can see that as time goes on the CO₂ levels start to get higher. As you move down the piece of art, you will start to see fish. I wonder what that could be? This data set is showing the depth of fish, also from the past 50 years. The number 0, is where the fish should be located, but clearly, that’s not where they are. As you can see the fish start to move farther and farther down. Then you move down to the final data set. That data set shows pH levels, which is basically how acidic the water is; it is depicted in green above the corals. These data sets are all connected, you see the ocean absorbs CO₂. The thing is the more CO₂ is absorbed the more acidic the oceans become leading to marine life moving deeper into the ocean and corals bleaching.

Safiya and Giulia

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Our artwork is demonstrating how large of an impact wildfires can have on the environment, and the world as we know it. When making this art piece we tried to connect everything to display the damage beforehand and how it can affect places afterward.

Sean and Nathaniel

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This piece of art is meant to display the impact that climate change has on the movement of marine species. One thing to notice is the fading of the fish’s colors. The darker the fish, the more recent the move is. The lighter fish show not only the past movements of the fish but how they’re fading away from their past habitat. Another thing to notice is how the colorful graph on the coastline correlates with the fish's movement. As the ocean temperature increases, the fish move North.

Mia and Sofi

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While making this eye catching piece of artwork, we tried to show a graph of the total surface area of the glaciers from one of the most well known glacier parks in the world, Glacier National Park. The map shows how much the total surface area of glaciers has decreased, and the increasing amount of consequences that it holds. Our graph takes the form of a melting glacier, and as the level gets lower, rising cities and homes can be seen on the horizon. At the same time, many icons can be seen that show the consequences of our industrial society and negligent decisions whenever we buy. Above it, we implemented a graph of carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, in an effort to try and show a connection to the viewers of our piece of artwork. We hope that you will gain a realization of how many consequences amass whenever we make a bad decision.

Ruihan, Carter, and Sage

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We created our art piece to demonstrate the cause and effect of CO₂ in the atmosphere. We started by showing some of the biggest causes of CO₂ emissions. We included homes, cars, and factories. We used cotton balls that we painted to represent the emissions. We made the cotton balls lighter in color at the bottom and get darker at the top because we wanted to show that even if you might think your emissions aren’t a big deal, but it all adds up. To show the rise in CO₂ in the atmosphere we included a graph that showed that. After this, we included Glacier Mass Balance Graph which just shows the total amount of glacier ice, and a graph that shows Sea Level Rise. We made the glacier graph a glacier and melting into water is the sea level rise. By doing this we showed how glaciers melting raises the sea level. Our main goal with this was to show that even if your emissions don’t seem like an issue it’s all adding up and it has a big effect on the environment.

Gwen and Eli

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Our piece is showing the effect of severe weather in the US. WE can see that the line is the carbon dioxide concentration as it is increasing and it also creates a higher ratio of rain to snow. The glaciers are illustrating the temperature between 1979-2019 and they created an average of all these temperatures and they are comparing this average to the temperature of each year. So therefore, the glaciers above this average are melting because those are the years that are warmer than average. Now the amount of glaciers above average is increasing.

Mariana and Ytien

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When you look at this piece of art, we want you to feel empowered. We want you to really feel the effects of what humans have done to this Earth. We want you to notice the CO₂ levels that are rising because of humans, especially traveling by plane, the effects that rising temperatures are doing to lake life, the effects that ice thaw dates have on lakes around the globe. We want you to feel what we feel and how desperate we are for a change. When you look at this artwork, we used cotton balls and tissue paper to portray ice, and how the ice thaw dates decreased over time. We also chose to use lots of colors because it is more aesthetically pleasing if we are being honest :) But also we chose to draw New England because those were the places we were focusing on, not only the states but the red circles are the lakes and their ice thaw dates getting pushed back (-16, -4, -1). The plane is showing the rising CO2 levels because of humans, and the other line is showing the lake's temperatures. Oh, and the lake at the bottom represents the lake life and how it affects the fish. We hope you received our message and can feel how strongly we feel about this issue!

Molly and Winnie

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Our art piece shows both the extent of arctic sea ice and the change in ocean temperature compared to the 20th century. The sea ice extent is represented by a blue layered graph. Each layer represents the aging of arctic sea ice. The lightest color represents ice that is one year old and this pattern continues up until ice that is 5+ years old. The other graph on our piece is sea temperature rise that you can see represented by tissue paper. As shown, as the sea temperature rises, the older ice (5+ year) melts. We also added a sun to our piece to show how sunlight also affects sea temperature rising. The “lasers” coming from the sun show how light will reflect off ice because it’s lighter, but will absorb into the darker ocean. This means that the more ice melts, the warmer the ocean will become. This is important because this will affect us and the animals. Animals are losing their homes and dying which is destroying the food chain. Additionally, with the sea levels rising, our cities and homes are going to flood and Islands are going to sink. We hope that what you’ll take away is that our world is in danger, we need to be more proactive when it comes to global warming, if not we will all be underwater soon.

Paige and Sonia

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What we were hoping is that when looking at this piece the viewer will feel sorry for the birds considering that they are moving inland farther and farther each year. They should also feel a little scared considering that the piece also shows the carbon dioxide level rising and the heat temperature rising as well. Some of the artistic choices we made was using watercolor. We used water color to show the increase of temperature over time. Another choice we made was to use collage. We used collage to show more of an artistic side rather than the informational side so that we could have a balance between the two. Our next choices as an artist were to put all of the information on a map of America which blends really well with the collage because it looks like the birds are flying inland from coast as shown in the data.

Luka and Zaki

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This piece of art that we have created represents the number of unfrozen days from 1979 to 2020. As you can see, we have shown this data in the form of mountains. Along with this, we have shown temperature in the form of suns, and sea level rise in the form of an ocean at the bottom. We have also decided to include buildings at the bottom. With these, we see how the fumes they are emitting are a factor in global warming and sea level rise. We made sure to line up the graphs so that the times lined up.

Wilson and David

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Hope you can swim.

Arctic sea ice is connected to surface temperature in some interesting ways. We’ve represented the ice with a lighter blue color against the left side of the graph. Along the right axis is sea level. Both are shown over the past 35 years along the y axis of time. We’ve chosen to represent the albedo effect as rays coming off the sun. On the ice gets reflected, while in the water the energy gets absorbed. This causes an increase in surface temperature, which is shown as the color in the rays radiating off the sun. You will notice a polar bear on your left. Unfortunately, this polar bear does not know how to swim. He will not survive like many other animals including humans.

Greenhouse Gases generated by humans heat up the arctic, melting the sea ice. Now that this ice is replaced by water more of the sunlight's energy will be absorbed. Thus further increasing surface temperatures, melting glacial ice. This will raise sea levels, making land uninhabitable.

Ben and Tyler

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Our art project is about the change in annual burned acreage by state between 1984-2001 and 2002-2020. Or more simply how many more or less acres of land were burned in each state from 1984-2001 to 2002-2020. Our art project shows a map of the US with different fires and trees representing the change in the burned acreage. The fires with the red orange and yellow states represent the states with 3 or more acres burned by wildfires. The fires with the orange and yellow represent the states with 1-2 acres burned by wildfires and the states with beige and yellow fires burned between 0.2-1 acres. The trees with half of the vegetation still on them represent -0.2-0.2 acres changed by wildfires and the trees full of vegetation represent between -0.2–2 acres of land changed by wildfires. We chose fires in our artwork because we are measuring the change in acreage by wildfires and we chose colours that are more connected to hotter temperatures and hotter fires as the states with more change in burned acreage. As you can see the west is doing much worse as between 1984 and 2001 there was significantly more land burned by wildfires than in the east, which is why there are the fires with the most red.

If you then direct your eyes to the top of the graph you can see a graph . The red bars represent the global average surface temperature every year compared to the global average between 1880 and 2020. The black line represents the CO₂ concentration per year in ppm. As you can see the carbon dioxide levels and the temperature increase have correlations as they increase together. This may cause the increase in wildfires in the west because hotter temperatures cause dryer land which can more easily burn.

David and Aidan

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Our artwork is showing the effects of the pollen season increase which is caused by an increase in days above freezing. The trees and flowers display an increase of pollen being produced. The bar chart shows the days above and below freezing from the 20th century average. The map is showing the length of the pollen season increasing and one decreasing in the US. The people display the effects of the increase in pollen season lengths in humans. We hope this makes your perspective about climate change stronger. We hope you make a change!

Armani and Isaac

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When you look at our work of art, we included two graphs. We created two graphs and the green/blue represents the snow cover in the United States from 1965 to 2020. The graph right above our snow cover graph represents the amount of CO₂ in PPM (parts per million) from 1965 to 2020. We want you to know the importance of climate change and the effect it has on our lives and the earth. As the temperature increases in the earth over the years due to the rising amount of greenhouse gasses that is causing the snow cover to lessen over many years. The changing color of the sun we drew represents the increasing temperature over the years. The ski lift showed important events relating to the years below it such as the paris agreement signed around 2015. The mountain we drew shows skiers having fun and snowing towards the left but as the years go by the snow turns into grass and soon the skiers are no longer skiing.

Elliot and Alex

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In the drawing that we created we are showing, on the x-axis, the years which go from 1960-2025. On the y-axis we are showing the Mass Balance of Average Arctic Glaciers and Ocean Heat. In this illustration we are showing sea level rising over the years, and also how the glaciers are melting which is causing animals to lose their habitats and oceans to get warmer. We are showing the glacier melting by using a graph of the average arctic glaciers. To indicate the sea level rising it is also using a graph but we used the average 0 and put houses to reveal how much sea level is rising over the past years. Nevertheless, did you know that when the glaciers are melting it is affecting both the fish and sea animals and birds? It influences sea animals like birds because they survive on fish for food, but also the nutrients in the ocean. As the ocean heats up, they lose a lot of their food, and then they could possibly die. We represent that the ocean of animal goods in the past years was all colorful, but as we come to the more recent years they are turning lighter and lighter.

Emily and Mae

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We are trying to show the comparison between the bloom dates from 1951-1960 and 2011-2020. The orange flowers represent the flowers blooming earlier in 2011-2020 and the blue flowers represent the flowers blooming later. The birds are getting skinnier from left to right because the more the birds travel north the more scarce their foods are. The graph going through the middle of the map is showing the average miles birds have traveled north and the graph below is the rise in temperature.

Isabella and Katie

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In our climate data art project, we tried to show how the glaciers in Antarctica and Greenland are shrinking through the rising CO₂ levels in the atmosphere. We decided to put the CO₂ graph in the air as CO₂ is a gas in the atmosphere. We also used white crayons to make pictures in the black cloud of CO₂ in order to show some of the things that release CO₂ such as cars, certain factories, and urban areas. Underneath the CO₂ graph, we decided to make a gradient from yellow to red to show how the severity of climate change has increased over time. Underneath the gradient is the data set we were assigned, or ice mass balance. Because the graph has lines that are going down, we decided to represent the graph as a glacier, decreasing in height. You may also notice that there is another graph underneath the glacier. This graph represents the difference of the average sea surface temperature to the sea surface temperature in different years. We included this because we thought that ice sheets and glaciers were melting, not because of increased light radiation, but because the seas around them were getting warmer (as glaciers are white and reflect a lot of the light waves).

Andrew and John

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We wanted our art to show the struggle and impact that climate change can have. Typically, when you think of climate change, your mind automatically goes to global warming, forest fires, etc. We wanted to bring awareness to the other impacts of climate change that are ever present, and just as dangerous. We started by studying precipitation and temperature. After doing our research on the topic, we noticed patterns relating to temperature increase and extreme one-day precipitation events. This concerned us because we found that as time went on and temperatures rose, there was a correlating increase in extreme precipitation events. These events can lead to an increased amount of flooding, which can greatly impact coastal cities, and many people around the world. Our artwork is showing a timeline showing different houses that have not yet been impacted by these effects, to houses that were greatly impacted by temperature and flooding. Ultimately rising temperature is a cause of flooding which can put many people at great risk.

Ezria, Kylie, and Ishara

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Our art piece shows a map of California where we show the sea level rise, and the temperature rise. We started with a map of the U.S. showing the amount of days we are gaining above 32 degrees. We noticed California was the fastest rising place so we chose to make a map of that. Around our map we have different things people do that will be harder to do if the Earth keeps getting warmer. We show the temperature going up by using mountains and as the temperature gets higher. There is less snow which makes more water. Water expands when getting warmer so that shows how our graphs correspond. We have the yellow, orange, and red to also show the temperature change. We have the houses under water and fire because with the sea level rising these houses will eventually be underwater, and with the temperature rising there will be more fires. We show dead fishes when people are fishing because as the water gets warmer the fish will die. That means people might catch dead fish.

Zach and Jake

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