But what I really want to talk about is a new style of presentation. The last few posts have tracked my learning curve with Javascript; now I'm coupling it with the canvas feature of HTML 5. This means I can do client-side graphics - much more flexible and interactive
What this means for November GHCN temperatures is that I can show the anomalies directly - without cell aggregation or smoothing with orthogonal functions. This is done by a triangular mesh and HTML5's neat linear color gradient function. Every station has it's anomaly directly represented with the correct color.
I found this very interesting, as it shows graphically how correlated the anomalies are. Most of the color picture is actually quite smooth. There are exceptions, and because these can be associated with large triangles, it gives an exaggerated effect there. But for the most part, large scale patterns show through well.
So here's the plot of November average temperature anomalies, in °C. It is of course interactive - you can rearrange it, magnify, show the stations, click to see station detail and numbers etc. Use Ctrl+. Ctrl- to get it the right size for your screen. The mechanics are explained below the jump.
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How it works
The flat map at top right is your navigator. If you click a point in that, the sphere will rotate so that point appears in the centre. The buttons below allow modification. Set what you want, and press refresh. You can show stations, and the mesh, and magnify 2×, 4×, or 8× (by setting both). You can click again to unset (and press refresh).Then you can click in the sphere. At the bottom on the right, the nearest station name and anomaly will appear. You may want to have stations displayed here. You'll see two faint numbers next to "stations". This indicates how much your clicked missed the station by (in pixels). It's not really a test of your mousing, but of my getting the alignment right (fiddly).
I'm continuing to work on the shading. The HTML5 function is good, but it works by RGB linear interpolation. The rainbow scheme that I use isn't linear (linear schemes are monochromatic and boring), so they get out of alignment. This sometimes means that one of the corners of the triangle does not get quite the right color. That can happen when there is a lot of change within a triangle.
Comparative plot of recent months, and the usual spherical harmonics fit.
and the Spherical Harmonics map
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More data and plots
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Nick, first off I'd like to thank you for your work. I enjoy reading your posts and watching these projects evolve.
ReplyDeleteMy question is, why not use off-the-shelf GIS software? I have some familiarity with ESRI products but I know there are free GIS products that will also do most of what you want with minimal effort.
Thanks, DKO. I'm sure GIS software could do this better. In a way, that's where I was last year writing KML files for GE.
ReplyDeleteBut since I started on this enterprise back in July with spaghetti plots, I've been exploring how interactivity through a browser can help communicate quantitative information. That's the motive for using a sperical projection with buttons, for example. A lot of effort has gone into Mollweide projections etc, trying to balance fidelity with showing the whole world surface. But with interactivity you can have both.
So that's why I like JS and HTML5. It isn't that they do something unique, but they can put it on everyone's screen.
Or at least almost everyone. I gather there are still environments where the graphics don't appear. IE's default rejection of javascript I can't do anything about (except invite users to change the settings), but I'd really like to hear of other situations where graphics don't work.
An undersea telecommunications cable used to transmit about half of the huge volume of data coming from the Aqua satellite was cut in late November off the coast of the Netherlands, delaying receipt of that data. While there were redundant data transmission capabilities, apparently both failed.
ReplyDeleteOkay, who snipped the cable and the redundant transmission capabilities?
Not me! Even though it means TempLS was second one in this month :)
ReplyDeleteNo wonder Roy cut the cable! After his roaring about the big dip in channel 5 at the start of November, UAH November goes out like a lamb.
ReplyDelete