Climate change is on the surface a hot potato.  There are all sorts of folks from Prince Charles to Prof Naomi Oreskes pointing out the folly of ignoring the scientific consensus on the warming of our earth and its cause – us.  One thing YOU can do is look at the evidence and come to your own conclusions.

Today’s issue of the Sustainability Information Diet (SID*) features two videos using visualization. Exploring how climate works and getting an Earth perspective enables us to see what’s going on thanks to software that turns data into a visual representation.

I selected these two from the over 900 videos we’ve curated on the subject of sustainability, keeping them organized using a database that displays them for public access on our site, EarthSayers.tv in the special collection on climate change.

NASA Finds 2011 Ninth-Warmest Year on Record

In this animation of temperature data from 1880-2011, reds indicate temperatures higher than the average during a baseline period of 1951-1980, while blues indicate lower temperatures than the baseline average.  Visit Union of Concerned Scientists for more information.

Uncovering Winter’s Mystery

A brief recap of the satellite news media tour on February 1, 2012 that looked at the science of falling snow, how NASA observes snow from space, and the factors that lead to the 2010 “Snowmageddon.” For more on the story, check out http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/know-snow.html

*The SID series by Ruth Ann Barrett of EarthSayers.tv is designed to increase sustainability awareness and address the information overload problem of our readers through portion control – selecting out the best – and emphasizing online video, especially the unfiltered voices of business and civic leaders, teachers, experts, and citizens from all walks of life.  It’s a series that is part of her blog, Sustainability Advocate.