The BC Climate Explorer is an independent, open-source data visualization project. Our goal is to help British Columbians - citizens, professionals, and public servants - to understand their changing local climates.
Motivation
As the global climate changes, there is an increasing demand for information about the climates that we live and work in. Foresters, engineers, biologists, farmers, and medical professionals need detailed climate data to adjust their practices for anticipated climate changes. Citizens need intuitive climate information to guide their responses in the job market, their communities, and the voting booth. There are many sources of climate data available to British Columbians. However, translating this data into insight can be challenging, even for the most experienced climate analyst. The intent of this tool is to help people develop an intuitive understanding of the differences between the local climates of British Columbia, how these climates are changing, and how they are likely to be influenced by international climate policy.
Data Sources
All climate data used in this site are downloaded from ClimateBC. The linework for the climate maps is generalized from Version 10 (beta) of the Biogeoclimatic Subzone/Variant (BGC) Mapping, obtained under the Open Government License – British Columbia. See the "climate data" page for more details about the climate data used on this site.
Contributing to the BC Climate Explorer
The BC Climate Explorer is an open-source project, and we are interested in building our community of contributors. You can contribute to the development of the website on GitHub, or email us with your questions, comments, and ideas.
Team
Colin Mahony. Concept, Data Processing, & Scientfic Direction.
Joey Lee. Design & Development.
Kevin Klugmann. Development
Acknowledgements
We gratefully acknowledge the Biogeoclimatic Ecosystem Classification (BEC) and Ecology Research program of the British Columbia Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations for providing BEC spatial data and expert guidance.
Big thanks to the developers and financial supporters of ClimateBC, a project of the Centre For Forest Conservation Genetics at the UBC Department of Forest and Conservation Sciences.
We thank several contributors during the part of the Mozilla Science Lab Global Sprint 2016; Victor Barua, Dianna Barry, and David Bild. Many thanks to Kristina (Mozilla) and the Mozilla Vancouver Space for hosting!
Big thanks to TerreWEB and the Mozilla Science Lab for providing the fellowship funding that made this project possible.
The BC Climate Explorer is built on Cartodb.js, Mapboxgl.js, Plotly.js, PubSub.js and D3.js.