Climate data analysis – greenhouse gas and ozone data
Jason Morgan demonstrates some of the functions of Google Data Studio. In this video, Jason shows us how to navigate the greenhouse gas datasets. Each dataset enables users to filter by date and sector. The data becomes more specific as users navigate through 10 levels of emissions information.
Climate data analysis – an introduction – navigating the home page and filtering by location and date.
Climate data analysis – ways of representing data – exploring Data Studio functions/ways to visual data.
Climate data analysis – specific weather data – exploring how to drill down into specific datasets.
Transcript
Jason Morgan
We’re looking at trends and patterns in greenhouse gases. So here we have our 17th page: Greenhouse Gas Concentration Trend. Here we see a series of different colours – so we have blue, turquoise, pink and orange. These relate to our gas types. So currently, it’s showing all. If I just want to look at carbon dioxide, I select ‘only’, and now we can see the carbon dioxide patterns for the last few years. If I wish to have a look at methane – move to methane – and we see the pattern for that and for carbon monoxide. What we’re also able to do, like we did before, is filter for our periods of time.
We now move onto our other greenhouse gases, and this is where the data becomes really quite complicated. Here we have a series of pie charts where we look to explore data, and over here, we have a series of sectors showing.
So this is a level 1 analysis, and I can select the data range for that period of time or I can select a date. So I’m going to look for the year of 1994 to make my data a little bit more interesting. So here is my breakdown of my gases telling me that methane was 67%, carbon dioxide was 23.4%.
If I move to some of the other levels and breakdowns and I select my dates again, the data can be filtered by the level 2 criteria. So I can now explore just the energy sector. So here we can see the energy sector is producing far more carbon dioxide. If I now wish to have a look at the agriculture sector, methane seems to be their major problem – really interesting way to explore and compare different industries.
The amazing thing happens when we start exploring further on inside this data and we have a look at a level 3 analysis where we’re beginning to see all sorts of types of industries that we can explore. This enables students to really get in it and look at some of this data. What I’d like to point out is some of this data has zeroes beside it. This tells us that there is no data currently available so there’s no point selecting those criteria. We’re looking at agriculture, we’re looking at forest land production, wetland, settlements and other sorts or types of conditions. These analyses continue on for quite a long way and in quite detail.
We now skip to greenhouse gas level 10 analysis. It might give you just a feel for just how powerful this data can be. So again, we’ve got a similar looking sheet. I’m going to now look at a slightly earlier date because we’re starting to explore this stuff a little bit more – so 2016. Here we have our level 10 analysis, and if I now explore some of these things – look at some of the types of data that we can get. We can look at settlements, we can look at cropland, grassland with woody biomass. Some of the data that has been collected here really is amazing. You’ll notice that some of the data has a negative sign to it. This tells me that obviously that these are releasing or taking gases in according to where the data is so will greatly affect the ability to be able to produce a pie chart. Students can obviously explore this data just like they have with everything else. By coming over here and they’re able to download the files – Excel files or exported to Sheets. Really powerful explorations.
The last sheet is our ozone data. In here, we have our ozone analysis. Slightly different graphs this time. Here, we have a maximum line, an average line and a minimum line. This enables the students to see the range of where data can be explored from and just by hovering on it they’re able to see the year
Acknowledgements Video footage and narration by Jason Morgan Ministry for the Environment Stats NZ
