Historic climate data revisited - 1 - circum-Antarctic

[Update 2: this series has full CC BY-SA 3.0 class notes here
Update 1: please see a mirror project for the Arctic in Part 2.]

With ongoing debates whether Antarctic ice in increasing or not, and its effect on climate change, we must avail ourselves of as much data as we can. If historic climate data is at hand, not only do they get scarcer going farther back, but 1880 also marks a time prior to which their reliability falls off.

So having mapped climate data off tall ships captains logs from 1750 to 1850, I wondered how far south they sailed, and how much they augmented historic climate data around the Antarctic?

"Qui peut le plus, peut le moins" or "Horses for courses"

These quips mean that, while we may have great tools for complex workflows, such as Mapping Well Data I'll present as AAPG Visiting Geoscientist in Hungary next month, sometimes it's better to pare it down to its simplest form, such as for a friend "looking to map addresses to [a French geographic subdivision]".

Development of Spatial Grids and...

The Association for Geographic Information Geocom2017 gathered at the Geographical Society in London late last October. Its Lightning Talks showcased new ideas and businesses. I was invited there to challenge attendees "to think about the development of spatial grids and the structure of spatial data models". The presentation itself and thank-you letter were followed by a short report in GIS Professional scanned here:

GDPR revisited

I already wrote about GDPR from the perspective of helping users get started with using Mind Maps. The presentation wraps up with further help from LINQ I partnered with.

My adventure with Storm Fionn

As Storm Fionn wrought chaos in England and Cambridge, here's my adventure in returning a rental car this morning.

Mind maps for GDPR

[Update: see a revisit of this topic]

General Data Protection Regulation will come to European Union five months from Christmas! You will have read of it no doubt, if not, links are in presentation below: Up to Slide 10 is a simple set of tools - mind maps - to get started on this complex process; after that is a suggestion for further help.

Vectors are your friend, Part III

Esri just updated its World Vector Basemaps (v.2). I updated below the notoriously complex and details Aalan Archipelago offshore Turku, Finland. I contrasted in this blog 4½ years ago posting the GSHHG world vector dataset in giscloud.com, a web vector mapping system, and ArcGIS Online, richer in data but then in raster. See an OpenStreetMap backdrop earlier in my companion blog.

GeoHipster Calendar: 2018

This is my third Calendar entry from the most excellent Geohipster spearheaded by @atanas, @billdollins and @gletham - the inaugural 2014 and the 2015 can be seen here - I missed last year but I told them:

Free tools & data to predict hurricanes

Four weeks ago I blogged here about the availability of open data, posting it on the open web and its potential social impact. Two weeks ago I blogged here too about tracking three hurricanes in the Caribbean via the brilliant but closed earth.nullschool.net. In between I compared & contrasted open & closed regimes on my Medium channel... and that 2½ yrs after a previous blog here on same!

Trio of Caribbean Hurricanes early Sept 2017

Evolution of Hurricanes Katia, Irma and José, and of Tropical Storm 57. Note how:

• Katia developed late over Gulf of Mexico & stops shortly after head-on landfall
• Irma is the strongest having developed over warmer S Atlantic then Caribbean
• weakens to Category 3 on first Florida Keys landfall
• strengthens again over western Gulf of Mexico 
• immediately weakens at second Florida Coast landfall
• still Cat2 (not shown) then finally Cat1 before degrading
• José stays strong over water, strengthens briefly to Cat4-5 then swerves to W Atlantic
• Tropical Storm 57 never materialised into a possible and feared hurricane three-punch