30 Year Climate Comparisons

In this assignment, I was tasked with creating a professional map displaying change in global temperatures between two time periods using data from NASA's GISS Surface Temperature Analysis. The goal was to compare two time periods' annual mean temperatures (January - December) to a baseline time period to determine how much temperature has increased across the globe. 

These maps were generated using NetCDF data from NASA. In order to display the data, I created a layer using the Make NetCDF Raster Layer tool in Arc Pro for both of my time periods. Next, I used the Create Random Raster tool to create a symbology template. I set the primary symbology to Stretch with the type set as Minimum/Maximum and used a divergent color scheme to illustrate warming and cooling. I also changed the statistics option to Custom, and replaced the minimum and maximum values with with the greatest absolute value from the data. In order to save this symbology, I saved the random raster as a layer file.

Since the rasters I created for my two time periods were temporary raster files, I exported them to make them permanent. Then, I went into the symbology for both, and imported my saved layer file to make the two layers have congruous symbology.

The main point I took away from this assignment was the importance of accurate display techniques in order to present complex and technical data to the general public. It is crucial in GIS to create map figures that do not display bias, which is where symbology becomes critically important.