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Data Vis Dispatch
July 19th, 2022

Data Vis Dispatch, July 19

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

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Rose Mintzer-Sweeney

Welcome back to the 54th 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 heat, air travel, and the natural world.

This week’s massive heat wave would have been one in a thousand just a few decades ago. But the future is likely to bring many more summers like it:

The New York Times: Tracking Dangerous Heat in the U.S., July 12
Der Spiegel: Willkommen im Zeitalter der Hitze, July 14
Financial Times: The British still think heatwaves are fun — not for much longer, July 14
Bloomberg: London Is Set to Bake in 40-Degree Heat. Get Used to It, July 16
Financial Times: Climate graphic of the week: how sleep fares during climate change, July 16
CBC News: Cooling Canopy, July 13
Der Spiegel: Wo herrscht schon Alarmstufe Rot?, July 14

Hot, dry summers mean wildfires. We saw four different versions of this line chart (from The Financial Times, Szabad Európa, De Tijd, and The Economist) showing just how much worse than usual this fire season in Europe has been:

Financial Times: ‘Climate change shoved in our face’ — Europe wrestles with heatwave and forest fires, July 18
Szabad Európa: Óriási erdőtüzeket hoz már a mostani extrém meleg idő is, July 18
De Tijd: Hittestolp houdt extreme temperaturen vast boven West-Europa, July 18
The Economist: How bad are Europe’s wildfires?, July 18
National Geographic: The key to protecting Yosemite’s sequoias from wildfires? More fire, July 15

If the climate crisis weren’t a good enough reason for Europe to change its energy mix — there are also the risks of relying on imported gas:

National Geographic: India is reinventing its energy strategy—and the climate may depend on it, July 14
Le Monde: Réduire sa consommation d’énergie : pourquoi et comment les individus et les entreprises peuvent-ils agir ?, July 15
Süddeutsche Zeitung: Was das Neun-Euro-Ticket bringt, July 15
De Tijd: Europese gasnachtmerrie nadert, July 15
Neue Zürcher Zeitung: Wie Wasserkraftreserven die Schweiz vor dem Stromausfall bewahren sollen, July 14

Even food exports are being used as a tool of war by Russia in its invasion of Ukraine:

El País: Barcos fantasma rusos para robar cereal en Ucrania, July 17
Süddeutsche Zeitung: Was Putins Truppen in Schwierigkeiten bringt, July 15

These charts looked back at lives saved and lost to COVID this year:

The Economist: Which covid-19 vaccine saved the most lives in 2021?, July 13
Neue Zürcher Zeitung: Herr Stöhr, wer ist besser durch die Pandemie gekommen: Deutschland oder die Schweiz?, July 13

And air travel is still struggling to pull off its pandemic-era comeback:

Keyeun Lee: “#TidyTuesday Week 28: European flights. Visualising flight data with multi-series line chart using emoji,” July 14 (Tweet)
The Wall Street Journal: Air Travel Is Broken. Here’s Why, July 18
Financial Times: US tourists drive rebound in foreign visitors to London’s top attractions, July 15

In elections, a leadership contest in Britain and an ominous midterm outlook in the U.S.:

The Economist: Who will be Britain’s next prime minister?, July 18
Financial Times: Tory leadership election tracker: Four candidates remain in race to be PM, July 18
FiveThirtyEight: What’s Behind Biden’s Record-Low Approval Rating?, July 14
FiveThirtyEight: At Least 120 Republican Nominees Deny The Results Of The 2020 Election, July 18

This week brought several beautiful visualizations on science and nature:

SBS News: 녹조라떼가 우리 식탁에 올라올 수 있다고?, July 14
NBC News: How pictures from the Webb telescope compare to Hubble’s, July 12
Gazeta Wyborcza: Klimatyczna prognoza dla Polski. Gdzie czekają nas huragany, gdzie powodzie, a gdzie nieznośny upał?, July 18
National Geographic: Dazzling photos show horseshoe crabs thriving in protected area, July 12

As well as these on race and racism in the United States:

The San Francisco Chronicle: ‘Are the police capable of changing?’: Data on racial profiling in California shows the problem is only getting worse, July 14
The Wall Street Journal: Chicago vs. Dallas: Why the North Lags Behind the South and West in Racial Integration, July 16

Finally, we saw other maps and charts of housing, trains, population, left-footedness, and detention without trial:

The New York Times: The Housing Shortage Isn’t Just a Coastal Crisis Anymore, July 14
Der Spiegel: Wenn der ICE ausgebucht ist, July 13
The Economist: The pecking order of the world’s population is soon to change, July 14
Serac: Tirer des deux pieds est-il plus efficace ?, July 17
The New York Times: Egypt’s Revolving Jailhouse Door: One Pretrial Detention After Another, July 16

What else we found interesting

Reuters: Assassination of Shinzo Abe, July 19
The Washington Post: How Novavax is different from other coronavirus vaccines, July 13
Nexo Jornal: Quais os tipos de cuia para chimarrão e como ela é produzida, July 12
The Washington Post: An illustrated encyclopedia of people at the airport, July 15

Applications are open for…

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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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