Unisys Is Changing Their Color Scaling On Sea Surface Temperature Anomaly Maps
by Bob Tisdale
A couple of weeks ago, Unisys announced they are changing the color scaling on their daily Sea Surface Temperature (SST) anomaly maps.
The new Unisys SST anomaly map looks more like the GlobalSST anomaly maps from the NOAA Coral Reef Watch website:
Refer to their post New Sea Surface Temp Anomalies Graphic. The following gif animation compares the old and the new Unisys presentations:
Old and New Unisys SST Anomaly Maps
Unisys writes:
Based on user feedback we developed a new version of our Sea Surface Temperature Anomalies plot with a different color scale. We had been asked to modify the color scale to better differentiate between above and below normal temperatures.
Unisys also asked for comments. There’s a link on their blog post linked above. I suggested a band of neutral white at +/- 0.05 deg C.
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I agree with Bob, we see graphs all the time with a zero line for temperature anomaly, it is accepted practice to present zero or “normal” in graphical anomaly representations.
WUWT has a collection of posts on the use of color for presentation of data, we can add this one from Bob Tisdale to the library. The trend is to paint the world redder.
- A color scheme change for the SST map
- ENSO color tricks from NOAA’s Environmental Visualization Lab
- Color and Temperature: Perception is everything
- Coloring the Models: Climate Change through Color Change
While Unisys paints the town red, other organizations offer a zero/normal presentation. For example:
Even the NOAAWatch SST meter has a zero with neutral colors, which is stuck these days as it hasn’t been updated in awhile:
Unisys responding to user feedback probably has to do with the fact that their previous presentation looked too “cool” for the many hotheaded thinkers that only see the world in shades of warmer colors.
At issue is not the scientific interpretations of such maps, but the public interpretation. Seeing reds oranges and yellows, with no balance for “normal” allows the uninitiated and undiscerning to point at the map and exclaim Rommisms like: Look! We’re boiling!
The was no worry of such a thing happening with the previous Unisys color scheme.
So, if you think a neutral color best conveys the SST data where it is new zero, take Unisys up on their offer:
Please take a look at our new plot and let us know what you think by emailing us at: technical-support@weather.unisys.com.
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Who was the “user” —— Hansen?
It was Hansen, Derrick Hannah, and all like minded folk tweeting from various jails around the country and the world. /sarc
The warmists strike again. The old product had a much more realistic representation of near neutral temperatures and was much easier to read than this new scheme. Unisys used to be my favorite product for a quick analysis of sst anomalies. Shame on them.
Yellow has the idea of sun, sand, and dry, Neutral color for normal as opposed to:
‘”Abby Normal” Yellow…
From the blog entry:
“Unisys also asked for comments. There’s a link on their blog post linked above. I suggested a band of neutral white at +/- 0.05 deg C”.
Don’t you mean +/- 0.5 deg C??
Introducing a spectral discontinuity at 0.0? Hate it.
Would have to agree, but then again, I’ve never liked the Unisys SST charts much anyway. White is the best color for a neutral temperature or zero anomaly…it quickly says, “nothing to see here”, and allows you to see the anomaly, which is the whole point, right? And any other color for “no anomaly” has some psychological bias, intended or not. Personally, I like IRI’s weekly and monthly charts:
http://iridl.ldeo.columbia.edu/maproom/.Global/.Ocean_Temp/Weekly_Anomaly.html
They are very simple, but I can quickly and easily see the anomalies, plus, on the same page I can go back and forth between the monthly anomaly, the persistence, the weekly anomaly, and the anomaly change. Very informative, convenient, and no color bias.
Cmon folks, get with the “post normal” normal…..
It’s hip to see red!
It’s not just the lack of white for near 0 anomaly, look at the the shading of the scale. They’ve moved the shades of green to the hottest end of the scale. Now green means super hot! It was shades of purple before.
Both of those scales in the new/old are outside the RGB scale system used for showing signal amplitude. You are not allowed to use the same color twice, at either end of the scale.
These color schemes are also a disaster for information transfer, 1/7 males has one form of color blindness, with red/green being the most common. About 8% of the population will be unable to transform these gradients.
They should use a gray scale using 27 for the mid-point and 0 and 255 as the min and max. As a species, we are really good at gray scale gradients, but I suppose that’s the point.
They changed the base color for 0 as well. On the old map, it was aqua now it’s yellow. That alone makes the entire map seem much “warmer”.
It’s worse than we thought.
BS (Bright Shading) Baffles Brains.
Get over it.
i just hit there site and it shows the old colors still…tried refresh and still old colors..did i hit the wrong site? http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sst_anom.gif
Jason Joice M.D. says:
September 4, 2011 at 9:50 am “They changed the base color for 0 as well. On the old map, it was aqua now it’s yellow. That alone makes the entire map seem much “warmer”.”
Right. Reminds me of the all new colour of zero in Jo’s post looking for the missing hot spot.
http://joannenova.com.au/2010/11/thorne-2010-a-very-incomplete-history-of-the-missing-hot-spot/
They should certainly not use yellow for zero when this is also for warmer grades.
I would propose to use white or green in the middle and shift to the right the yellow? Or else if the water does not warm we may still paint it as if 🙂
How about my map colorbar?
http://coaps.fsu.edu/~maue/SST/sst_planet_diff_2011.png
Ryan, I like your map a lot better than theirs!
Coloring maps with lots of scary reds and oranges is deliberately intended to alarm the populace. The late, great John Daly posted an article on it here. [Check out the blink gif a little way down.]
I saw this story this morning at Tisdale’s site and emailed them with the suggestion that 0 be white. I also said I thought they were doing the color change in order to make the ocean temperatures look worse.
Unisys writes:
Based on user feedback we developed a new version of our Sea Surface Temperature Anomalies plot with a different color scale. We had been asked to modify the color scale to better differentiate between above and below normal temperatures.
I would like to know who it was that did the ‘asking’ to modify the color scale.
It would be revealing if the ‘askers’ had names like Hansen, Suzuki, Mann, or Trenberth.
Neutral white is the perfect choice for normal range of SST, but why stop there?
Each map could have an equal-area calculated above, neutral and below summary.
Like this : Above-0.27, Normal-.48, Below-.25 Anomaly = -.02
Or, it could have an attached graphbar at the bottom, with a colored column indicating the area of each color on the map.
Yes, it is warmer, much warmer, it is our fault!
I surrender! Please, kill us in an humane way (by taxing us)!
There is absolutely no valid reason to change the zero anomaly colour to one more associated with warmth…other than to mislead.
DocMartyn says:
September 4, 2011 at 9:49 am
Both of those scales in the new/old are outside the RGB scale system used for showing signal amplitude. You are not allowed to use the same color twice, at either end of the scale.
These color schemes are also a disaster for information transfer, 1/7 males has one form of color blindness, with red/green being the most common. About 8% of the population will be unable to transform these gradients.
They should use a gray scale using 27 for the mid-point and 0 and 255 as the min and max. As a species, we are really good at gray scale gradients
Not necessarily. We can retain some color and even represent cold/warm scale appropriately for most of the population without excluding persons with deuteranomaly. Even those who are absolutely color blind would perceive it as a gray scale.
Therefore I propose this neutral color scheme, which has the additional advantage that its midpoint is actually gray.
Well to add a dissenting voice here – the old scale had dark green indicating warming. Dark green is not a colour I would associate with warming, so I can see why you’d want to change that. The old scale also had far too many colours in it, which simply made it unclear. The new scale is more logically ordered but switches far too abruptly from blue to yellow at zero. Perceptually these colours are a very long way apart. And it still has strange colours out at the temperature extremes.
To fix it I would get rid of the odd colours at the extremes by shifting out from the centre by 1.5 in
each direction. Then fill in the region from -1.5 to 1.5 with a much more gradual transition from pale blue to pale yellow – fading each in two stages to the neutral colour, white, in the central region from -0.5 to +0.5. Which I guess is pretty much exactly what Anthony suggested.