Not all geographic visualisations are maps. Charts, diagrams and graphs can be used to communicate and provide insight. Particularly when used to show change over time.
Using the statistical computing and graphics application R, with time series data from the World Bank on metric tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions per capita and urban population as a percentage of total population, the animation below was produced to investigate the relationship between urbanisation and carbon dioxide emissions from 1960 to 2016.
Carbon dioxide emissions are defined as those stemming from the burning of fossil fuels and the manufacture of cement. They include carbon dioxide produced during consumption of solid, liquid, and gas fuels and gas flaring.
The first thing to note is that correlation is not causation. Nonetheless, some observations can be made. For example:
1. Although you can not make out all of the three-letter country codes, a trend of countries becoming more urbanised over time is evident as they move along the x axis.
2. The red trend line suggests that the more urbanised a country is the more carbon dioxide it produces.
3. Some of the Middle Eastern fossil fuel producers such as Bahrain (BHR), Kuwait (KWT), Qatar (QAT), United Arab Emirates (ARE) have some of the largest carbon dioxide emissions per capita.
4. Luxembourg (LUX) stands out as having a large carbon dioxide emission per capita.
5. Trinidad and Tobago’s (TTO) carbon dioxide emissions start to rise in the late 1990s. Possibly due to bidding opening for 13 offshore leases for deep water production in 1996 and their subsequent exploitation.
No doubt there are more observations that can be made with closer study of the data and context. But I hope the approach serves to demonstrate how animating time series data can begin to provide geographic insight.
Finally, Aruba was removed from the data prior to processing. It is an outlier in terms of carbon dioxide emissions, with well over 100 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions per capita for a number of the years in question. It’s data is shown separately below.
What happened in 1986? The outdated and obsolete Lago refinery closed down.
geo.fyi 