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WaterAirFireEarth t1_jatqj59 wrote

Finally, a plot true to the name of the sub. Would love to see other similarly diverse/sized areas if possible to compare.

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has14952 OP t1_jatu436 wrote

Will definitely try to see if I can find a high resolution dataset for other similar regions.

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has14952 OP t1_jatifrq wrote

Temperature data was obtained from this dataset: data

Plot produced using python

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_Penulis_ t1_jatkj73 wrote

You really need to say “Italian Alps” since most of your audience won’t know where this is.

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has14952 OP t1_jato77c wrote

Ah good call. Wish I could change it

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zaboron t1_javemt1 wrote

Where else would Trentino be?

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has14952 OP t1_javhxlu wrote

Even though the Dolomites are a pretty popular tourist destination, I guess it’s still not one of the regions of Italy whose name is immediately recognizable for people who don’t know much about the region

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MerryEll t1_jb2tc83 wrote

I know where it is. The Italian side of my family lives there. I was happy to see this post. :)

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_Penulis_ t1_jay9u3q wrote

I was actually thinking “is this Switzerland or Italy?” before I googled it. I’m an Australian who has been to both countries, but I still didn’t quite know what I was looking at.

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Hagranm t1_jaw6ehj wrote

You ever heard of google. Ignoramus.

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_Penulis_ t1_jay9aam wrote

Yep. I googled it. But beautiful data is beautifully presented with simple clarity. It shouldn’t require most of its audience to go to google to try to work out what they are looking at.

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kompootor t1_jatqqr3 wrote

Very very cool.

Do you think there's be a good way to also convey altitude proper (or something else that may be interesting like humidity or precipitation) on the same graph without completely ruining the look?

I get that this was just a fun thing to print out for this sub, and everyone appreciates it including me -- this is as much to pick on everyone here as much as you, and is to keep in mind for future posts and anything you want people to notice. The source says the dataset is CC-BY, and that means attribution must be made on derivative works. Obviously nobody will hunt you down, but it's still important, especially for a visualization this cool. So that idiots online don't endlessly reproduce this image without attribution (which is common on Reddit), you'll want to include text of this sort in the image:

  • Name/organization/site/URL, to assign author credit (optional)
  • Original publication linkback of visualization (e.g., this reddit thread -- optional)
  • Your copyright/copyleft (such as CC-BY-SA-4.0, since the original dataset is not copyrighted and not share-alike.
  • Date or year of visualization creation
  • For good graph practice in general: Date or date range of data collected; and you should put the title text on the graph, and also label the x- and y- axes as longitude and latitude.
  • Primary citation: You can do "Authors, "Title" (Date)" or just "10.5194/essd-13-2801-2021" or whatever, as long as it's attributed.
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has14952 OP t1_jattzyx wrote

Thanks for all the helpful information about the right way to cite images like this. Will keep it in mind for the future for sure.

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For the other variables, I think it might be possible to try overlaying this in someway on an orographic map. Might be an interesting idea. For what it's worth you can still get a general feel for the elevation based on the readings. Since this is largely a mountainous area, the higher temperature areas on the map are the valleys and in between you have lower values wherever we have mountains.

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kompootor t1_jaw34x2 wrote

Yeah, maybe a greyscale topographical overlay or something. Obviously temperature, humidity and/or precipitation, and elevation (and also wind if you parameterize it right I guess) all correlate highly in the Alps, which is why it would be cool to see a visualization that could bring out areas in which they don't, should those areas exist. If those areas don't exist in any meaningful way, then there's no point I suppose.

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jaceapoc t1_javmzvr wrote

I don’t know how to read/interpret this

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has14952 OP t1_javrpa4 wrote

Basically at each point the temperature values are averaged across the time specified time period (1981-2016) and the magnitude of said average value is represented by a color (color bar on the right shows the general range each color represents).

Trentino is the region home to the Dolomites so it has both valleys and mountains. As one would expect, the valleys are the parts of the region with higher average temperatures and the mountains will have lower temperatures due to their elevation. So using just a temperature map, you get a pretty good idea of the overall topography of the region as well.

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ProficientVeneficus t1_javschg wrote

I mean, but this is then basically just elevation map. But made indirectly through temperature. Because there is a direct correlation of temperature with elevation, where for every 1000m temperature is lower by 6.5C (in average).

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has14952 OP t1_javuz0b wrote

Effectively yes. But given that it just shows us the general patterns of elevations i.e. the locations of mountains and valleys rather than their actual specific height above sea level, I feel it would be wrong to classify it purely as an elevation map.

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ProficientVeneficus t1_javyb1z wrote

So it is a fuzzy elevation map. :)

You might use this to expand it to gain new information though. Create three maps:

  • pure elevation
  • pure mean temperature for that time period (this one)
  • and offset between yearly temperature at certain altitude and these data. You can do it one year average vs this average. Is it getting warmer in valleys? Is it warmer than expected higher up?

Wdyt?

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has14952 OP t1_javzvzx wrote

ooooh very interesting idea. definitely worth checking out for sure

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jaceapoc t1_javszoj wrote

Thanks. I thought I was supposed to read it as a line graph and was looking for a 1981-2016 time axis, and also that you used the valleys as some sort of design for a line graph...

I think I got confused by the coordinates and the "square".

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_AlreadyTaken_ t1_jawgzko wrote

It is in the Dolomites (Italian Alps). It is essentially an elevation map.

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luk__ t1_jawhly4 wrote

Would it be possible to make that graph for Austria as well?

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has14952 OP t1_jawq5yo wrote

In principle if there is a dataset with enough resolution it should be doable. This one had a spatial resolution of 250m x 250m which is why it doubles as a plot of the elevation so well.

In general datasets like this require quite a bit of extra effort to put together since regular measurements for long time periods are not always present in regions with difficult terrain. So for this dataset the group had to do a fair bit of gap filling and spatial interpolation for missing measurements.

Such a high resolution isn’t entirely necessary for large scale weather forecasting so it’s mostly intended for researchers. Sorry for going off on a tangent here but TLDR: yes if someone has put together a similar dataset for all of Austria which I’m not aware of at the moment (would have to look it up)

Of course you can absolutely compute the mean annual temperature even with a low resolution dataset as well if the temperature values are all you’re interested in.

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luk__ t1_jawse9o wrote

Thanks for you quick answer. I think the picture would look very similar like Südtirol.

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