Warming and rising seas

Color the relationship between warming oceans and sea level rise in the past 20 years

Data sources

Global Surface Temperature Anomalies: Monthly Global Ocean. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), National Centers for Environmental Information. Accessed February 2017. This data contains:

• Monthly global ocean (combined) temperature anomalies with respect to the 20th century average (1901-2000)
• Covers 1880 to 2016

Global sea level time series from TOPEX/Poseidon (T/P), Jason-1, and Jason-2 with seasonal signals removed. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS), Laboratory for Satellite Altimetry (LSA). Accessed February 2017. This data contains:

• Estimates of mean sea level anomaly global ocean with annual seasonal signals removed
• Measured in millimeters
• Covers 1992 to 2016

How the data was used

• The ocean temperature anomaly data was read and the monthly mean values were calculated
• The global sea level data was read and the monthly mean values were calculated
• Each month was assigned a color based on its ocean temperature value (darker colors mean warmer)
• The sea level anomaly was drawn for every 5 years since 1995 and the color label was placed below each month for each year shown

Code

A python script is available in the code repository to generate or extend this activity, and can be run like this:

python ocean.py

Which will create an svg file with the sea level drawn every 5 years with the color labels placed under each month of each year shown. You can also add some optional parameters like this:

python ocean.py -y0 1990 -y1 2016 -yi 4

In this example, it would show the sea level for each 4 years between 1990 and 2016