Global Warming — does it really feel warm?
The Bloomberg visualization gives us a great overview of how different factors can play a role in the rise of the average temperature. The main takeaway here is that manmade factors, especially the greenhouse gases emission, are much more related to the temperature rise than natural factors.
But how much does it affect our subjective experience of warmth? Does global warming entail super hot summers or does it actually mean milder winters? The Bloomberg chart can give us the answer — let’s look at the numbers then!
I’ve downloaded the data directly from NASA and decided to look into different seasons. Are winter and summer months equally warming up? What I’ve discovered is that temperature changes vary, depending on the time of the year. Data suggests that global warming is more related to milder winters rather than hotter summers. Feel free to explore my Data Story!
Going further with our analysis, it would be interesting to see how the greenhouse gas emission changes with seasons. Can it be that we emit more gases in the winter? Can it be related to our at home energy use? The chart from Our World In Data suggests it might be the case. According to this graph, around 11% of greenhouse gas emission comes from residential buildings. Now, that we spend more and more time at home, let’s think how we can reduce the energy consumption!
I’d be also curious to see if there are any graphs that show the positive impact of some pro-ecological human activities — if you know any, let me know in comments!
Talking about data biases, some sources point out at the possible impact of the way we gather the temperature data. In 1990s the number of weather stations significantly dropped. Can it be that those stations were located in places of lower average temperature? Indeed, but as some post-hoc analysis show, exactly those places experience even stronger warming effect.
Other skeptics debate whether the temperature increase we observe is indeed that much different from what’s been happening in the past. We know there have been plenty of warming and cooling episodes on Earth so far. The biggest strugle is we didn’t have the same data gathering techniques back then and for majority of time humans didn’t exist at all. For that reason it’s hard to precisely predict what long-term effects might the current temperature rise have.
Perhaps the higher amount of CO2 in the atmosphere will enable exponential plant growth? But will we still be around to enjoy this? I’m curious about your thoughts!