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Data Vis Dispatch
August 16th, 2022

Data Vis Dispatch, August 16

The best of last week’s big and small data visualizations

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Rose Mintzer-Sweeney

Welcome back to the 58th edition of Data Vis Dispatch! Every week, we’ll be publishing a collection of the best small and large data visualizations we find, especially from news organizations — to celebrate data journalism, data visualization, simple charts, elaborate maps, and their creators.

Recurring topics this week include drought, babies, and historical anniversaries.

Europe’s hot, dry summer continues:

Bloomberg: Historic Drought Threatens to Cripple European Trade, August 10
Dominic Royé: “A single map for the worst #drought in 500 years in Europe. The river discharge anomaly based on reanalysis data from June to August 12 2022, shows an average negative anomaly of -29%, even reaching less than -62% at some points,” August 14 (Tweet)
Le Monde: La France touchée par des incendies d’une ampleur inédite, August 11
The New York Times: Wildfires Rip Through France, Again, Weeks After Last Heat Wave, August 11
The Economist: July’s heatwave may have killed thousands of Britons, August 9

Meanwhile, in the near future climate change will create an “extreme heat belt” around the Mississippi and increase the likelihood of a devastating megastorm in California:

The Washington Post: More dangerous heat waves are on the way: See the impact by Zip code, August 15
NBC News: The U.S. could see a new ‘extreme heat belt’ by 2053, August 15
The New York Times: The Coming California Megastorm, August 12

So, naturally, one of the pressing challenges of the moment is to… find new sources of natural gas:

El Confidencial: Ductos a través de 4.000 km de desierto y grupos armados: el plan que resucita por la crisis del gas, August 10
Reuters: 74.7% of EU gas storage is filled, August 11
Neue Zürcher Zeitung: «German Angst» vor dem Winter? Die Deutschen decken sich mit Brennholz, Briketts und Heizlüftern ein, August 15
Spiegel: Wer in Deutschland Gas spart – und wer nicht, August 11
Global Witness: Myanmar’s poisoned mountains, August 9

Energy prices are feeding into a general cost-of-living crisis:

The Economist: Britain’s economy is taking a drubbing, August 11
The Wall Street Journal: New York City Rents Hit Record Highs Amid Nationwide Housing-Price Increases, August 11

In U.S. politics this week — crime, abortion, and the Inflation Reduction Act:

FiveThirtyEight: How Democrats And Republicans Think Differently About Crime And Gun Violence, August 10
The Economist: A Supreme Court ruling could spell even more gun crime, August 11
The New York Times: ‘Chaos and Confusion’ in States Where Abortion Is On Again, Off Again, August 11
The New York Times: A Detailed Picture of What’s in the Democrats’ Climate and Health Bill, August 13
The Washington Post: The corporate minimum tax could hit these ultra-profitable companies, August 11

Not to mention some basic issues of democracy:

FiveThirtyEight: What If Democrats — Or Republicans — Had Won Every Redistricting Battle?, August 11
The Washington Post: Election deniers march toward power in key 2024 battlegrounds, August 15

Several anniversaries got attention this week. It’s been one year since the Taliban took control of Kabul, 75 years since the independence and partition of India and Pakistan, and 500 years since the first trip around the world:

National Geographic: Follow the troubled path of the first voyage around the world, August 11
Reuters: “India and Pakistan don’t fare well in terms of the freedom of press, according to the World Press Freedom Index calculated annually by Reporters Without Borders. Among 180 countries assessed in 2022, India ranked 150th while Pakistan ranked 157th,” August 12 (Tweet)
USA Today: One year after U.S. withdrawal, here’s what life is like in Afghanistan today, August 15

Our last breakout topic was babies and baby names:

SBS News: 인구 감소는 처음이라… 어떻게 해야 할까?, August 13
USA Today: Maternal mortality rates are higher for rural women of color. Data, charts, and maps show the disparity, August 11
El Diario: Más variados, originales y cortos: así se han popularizado 1.200 nombres en 25 años, August 14
The Washington Post: The most-regretted baby names, and more!, August 12

What else we found interesting

The Washington Post: We built a fake metropolis to show how extreme heat could wreck cities, August 11
The New York Times: Serena Williams: Charting a Career at the Top, August 9
The New York Times: The Rise of the Worker Productivity Score, August 14

Help us make this dispatch better! We’d love to hear which newsletters, blogs, or social media accounts we need to follow to learn about interesting projects, especially from less-covered parts of the world (Asia, South America, Africa). Write us at hello@datawrapper.de or leave a comment below.

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Rose Mintzer-Sweeney
(she/her, @rosemintzers) is a data vis writer on Datawrapper's communications team. She likes words, numbers, pictures, and all possible combinations of the same. Rose lives in Berlin.

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