Scientists across the globe confirm that climate change is at a global tipping point. First introduced 20 years ago by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the tipping point implies a point of no return when changes to climate are irreversible. The potential impacts of climate change are far-reaching, ranging from increased intensity and frequency of natural disasters to human migration and displacement.

While the recent news from the Trump Administration to pull out of the Paris Agreement is both discouraging and terrifying, there is still hope moving forward. Through clear visualizations and analyses, we hope to shed light to the relationship between climate change indicators like temperature and frequency of natural disasters. We hope our findings can do just a small part in providing evidence for climate change. And maybe get a sticker with a cow on it if we get a little creative along the way.

stickers

Dataset

Our team used several publicly available datasets with information on natural disasters, temperature variables, and total precipitation across year and state from 1953-2018. The Disaster Declarations Summary (Version 2) from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) contained summary level data on disaster declarations. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Climate at a Glance data included information on monthly maximum temperature, minimum temperature, average temperature, and total precipitation.

Website Overview

Project Report: A complete overview of project goals, data cleaning, analyses, discussion.

Summary Visualizations: Various plots and graphs to visualize trends in climate indicators and natural disasters.

Statistical Analysis: Association between natural disasters and climate change indicators using Poisson regression.

Natural Disasters: Interactive Shiny dashboard showing trends of natural disasters and average temperatures over time in the United States.

Interactive Map: Interactive Shiny map demonstrating trends in disasters and climate indicators over time and differences across the country.

Screencast: Check out our 2-minute screencast and secret tips for what to look at.