Interactive

Take Your iPhonography to The Next Holiday Season Level

Michael Interactive, Photo December 21, 2016

There is really a ton of visual pleasures out there beyond our everyday naked eye sight. (Maybe our eyes zoom and pan and focus too well, don’t they?)

Before iPhone 8 can do more amazing photography miracles, there are simple and inexpensive tools out there that will empower your already neat iPhone like those cool DSLR lenses. Above is what I got a few months ago and in this holiday season I am gonna use it to have a lot of fun. Here is a sample the iPhone took with it. Read More

Moonshot 2016

Michael Animation, Interactive, Photo November 13, 2016

November 2016 has been an eventful month in the US. Someone has made a moonshot in the most colorful presidential election. And here below are some of my moon shots, starting with the biggest full moon in almost a century on November 13, with a few variations of shutter speed, in GIF:

moon_shutter-speeds_20161113

Poll: When Will Sea Level Rise to Deadly Levels

Michael Data & Graphics, Interactive, Photo October 1, 2016

做气候变化和环境议题也有些年头了，理论和模型也了解了不少，但是这个跨世纪的全球大难题最确定的就是诸多的不确定性——比如海平面上升啥时候真的会威胁到我们的海滨城市呢？【点这里看ClimateCentral.org的一系列全球升温两摄氏度和四度的海平面上升对城市影响的系列假想图。】

在举国度假的闲暇，还是一起娱乐一下吧，不想总是那么严肃和忧虑了，看看自己朋友圈里的大伙们是乐观还是悲观占主流吧【纯娱乐，没有正确答案，如果声称掌握正确答案的，可以请Elon Musk的SpaceX过几年发配火星了】：请从四个答案中选择一个你认为最靠谱的，海平面上升会淹没很多海滨城市CBD核心区的年份！

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Quiz: Attendance and Literacy for Kids

Michael Data & Graphics, Interactive September 30, 2016

Now that I have a loved one in a public school already (I know, time flies), I have more space or CPU in my brain to pay attention to early education and issues related to school. It is a steep learning curve, but an enlightening one.

One of the days in my son’s first month of his PreK year, I went in to be lectured about attendance, and came back home appreciative that I went. The biggest take-away is that attendance, even at an early age like kindergarten could have striking influence over a young child’s reading competency by the third grade, at least that is what a 2011 California study finds. Here below have some fun guessing how much 5% absence or less (during both kindergarten and first grade years) will translate into young students’ reading competencies two years later.

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GIFs: Wuhan’s Shrinking Lakes

Michael Data & Graphics, Interactive, Photo July 11, 2016

动图组：武汉被吞噬的湖泊

沙湖曾是武汉市仅次于东湖的第二大“城中湖”，2000年以来被房地产开发潮不断蚕食；卫星图显示2000.11.1 - 2.16.2.20

沙湖曾是武汉市仅次于东湖的第二大“城中湖”，2000年以来被房地产开发潮不断蚕食；卫星图显示2000.11.1 – 2016.2.20 【新华社原文】

This year’s rainy season and floods have wrecked havoc on the city of Wuhan, which was home to 127 lakes in its urban areas. Now the city has 38 lakes remaining. Even though this many have survived the dramatic urbanization and land reclamation over the past few decades, they have most likely shrunk a great deal. With many new neighborhoods on low-lying lands that used to be lakes, the battle against floods this year is a particularly difficult one. Here below are a couple of examples viewed from space, thanks to Google Earth and those who care to find these images. [Tap on the link in the above image’s caption for original Xinhua post in Chinese language.]

Shahu Lake (or literally translated as sandy lake) used to be the second largest lake after the East Lake in Wuhan City. Since 2000, due to the encroaching real estate development and urbanization, the lake has been divided by a road and surrounded by high-rise buildings (above). Read More

GIFs: Shale Revolution & Scars in Texas

Michael Data & Graphics, Interactive June 23, 2016

Recently I took an eco-advocacy film to China. It’s called Dear President Obama, and is narrated by Mark Ruffalo. It calls for President Obama to reverse the “drill, baby, drill” on the so-called “clean” natural gas and visit many of the victims who have fallen ill in the wake of millions of fracking sites around the country. (Film trailer below)

I am a proud resident of New York, which seems to be the only state that has banned fracking in the U.S. Yet the industry has already wrecked havoc, in places like Texas that accounts for almost 30% of the national natural gas production. The scars left behind, in rectangle boxes in maps below, are disturbingly sad, to say the least:

In the early 2000s, the area east of Cotulla, Texas, was dry, sleepy shrubland. By 2015, a bustling network of roads and rectangular drill pads had completely transformed the landscape. The pair of satellite images below shows how much the landscape has changed. Landsat 5 acquired the upper image on December 17, 2000; Landsat 8 captured the lower image on December 18, 2015. Full post on NASA Earth Observatory

A bigger picture around Cotulla, Texas between 2000 and 2015. Full post on NASA Earth Observatory

A bigger-picture view around Cotulla, Texas between 2000 and 2015. Full post on NASA Earth Observatory

GIFs: Indian Drought Now and Flood 10 Years Ago

Michael Data & Graphics, Interactive, Photo June 17, 2016

India is too hot, literally. This, again, comes from NASA Earth Observatory:

Monsoon rains began arriving across India in early June 2016. For many Indians, it was not a moment too soon. After three underwhelming monsoon seasons, broad swaths of the country have been gripped by drought. An estimated 330 million people have been affected by depleted water supplies.

Of all of India’s reservoirs, Panchet Hill in Jharkhand was among the lowest compared to the 10-year average. In the first week of June 2016, the reservoir stood at 4 percent of capacity; the average for June is 40 percent. These two images were taken on June 10, 2015 and June 12, 2016

This is what it looks like at night on June 17, 2016, with much of India hotter than China’s biggest dessert in Xinjiang.

Some parts of India were as hot as 45 degrees Celcius in the evening of June 17, 2016, via earth.nullschool.net

GIF: Global Temperatures, Dubai Palm Island Building

Michael Data & Graphics, Interactive, Photo, Video May 27, 2016

Month after month, the world’s temperature records have been reset over and over again. And NASA Earth Observatory archive has it all. First one below on the rising temperatures on a global scale over more than a century, decade by decade with latest one of 2005-2014; second one about the first artificial palm island Dubai built on a beachfront.

According to an ongoing temperature analysis conducted by scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), the average global temperature on Earth has increased by about 0.8° Celsius (1.4° Fahrenheit) since 1880. Two-thirds of the warming has occurred since 1975, at a rate of roughly 0.15-0.20°C per decade.

The first Palm Island constructed was Palm Jumeirah, and the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) on NASA’s Terra satellite observed its progress from 2000 to 2011.
In these false-color images, bare ground appears brown, vegetation appears red, water appears dark blue, and buildings and paved surfaces appear light blue or gray.

Dubai, in early-morning hours, still registered temperatures in the 30s on May 28, 2016, only cooler than India, via earth.nullschool.net