Temperature History Scarf-Chart

This was requested on twitter a few weeks ago, so here is Edmonton's history of warm/cold years presented as a scarf-chart:

This covers the years starting from 1880 on the left to 2018 on the right at Blatchford. The years which are colder than the 20th century average are in shades of blue, while the warmer years are in red.

Why am I calling this a scarf-chart? Well, it's because people seem to enjoy making these things into scarves:

If anyone is interested in making an Edmonton scarf the data for each of the years is in a googledoc here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/16odSavArjvtASVk0Jll1qysWGY6iDWZz16mmHPxQ928/edit?usp=sharing


Here's another version of the chart with a bit of animation:

This cycles through the different temperature ranges - from the cold years at -5°C to -4°C below the 20th century average; up to the warm years at 3°C to 4°C above - and highlights them in yellow.

We've seen the same data before in this format:

The bargrapah version of the data is easier to read and compare...but it's probably harder to make into a scarf.

For a bit more comparison, here are a few of Canada's other winter cities:

Edmonton 1880-2018

Calgary 1885-2018

Winnipeg 1880-2018

Montreal 1880-2018

All of the scarf charts look pretty similar - with lots of blue years on the left and a lots of red on the right.

And for another view of how the cities compare we have:

We had looked at this bargraph version of the warm and cold years for Edmonton, Calgary, Winnipeg and Montreal in the 2018 in Review - Part 1 - Temperatures.