Storms Go Bump in the Night
Storms Go Bump in the Night
Embedded Files
The purpose of this lab was to create a kind of "advertisement" for GIS showcasing what is possible in a creative and eye-catching way for the critics of and those without much knowledge of GIS and its capabilities. For this map and the time of year it was made (week of Halloween) I decided to make a map of global tropical storms and hurricanes that happened between the hours of midnight and five o'clock in the morning.
Download map PDF here
Figure 1: This map showcases tropical storm and hurricane data between the years 1842 and the present (2020) that occurred between the hours of midnight and five o'clock in the morning. The speed in knots is for the speed of the storms as a whole, not individual wind speeds which are much quicker, up to 185 knots. The dashed purple line shows the equator, as most tropical storms and hurricanes occur above and below it. The man in the image is Professor Broom from the movie and graphic novel 'Hellboy', a story about creatures and people with special powers that protect the public from other creatures and people with special powers who are interested in using them for evil means. The title is spin-off of a quote by Professor Broom when explaining what it is that him and his team do.
First the data needed to be added to the map. I collected data from the storm data provided by the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The coastline and graticule data was obtained from the Natural Earth website. I wanted to improve the map and represent the impact these storms have on coastlines by increasing the coastline visibility. The graticule data provides latitudinal and longitudinal reference and allowed me to highlight the location of the equator. The heat that comes from the equator plays a major role in the creation of hurricane by providing the hot air that traps cooler ocean air below, leading to the creation of these storms. The map was provided by ESRI as a basemap in their 'Live Atlas' collection. I chose the 'South Pole Stereographic Projection' because I felt it showed the spiral nature of the storms and better showed the equator than North Pole projections.
In the attribute table from the hurricane data there was a field names 'hour' which provided what hour the storm was recorded in using the 24 hour time format provided using Universal Time Coordinates. It is within about 1 second of mean solar time at 0° longitude, and is not adjusted for daylight saving time, which does create some errors for the data, but plus or minus and hour would still be an example margin of error for the purpose of the map. The symbology increases in transparency and decreases in size as the speed of the storm decreases, providing greater representation of that quicker storms. I created symbology in PowerPoint that fuzzed out on the edges to soften the storm points and help improve the image. I also shifted the Central Meridian the get rid of the hole in the middle of the projection. This week I really focused on polish and exploring 'out of the box' ways to do that.
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse