Showcase your climate data visualisation talent with ESA

Showcase your climate data visualisation talent with ESA
by Staff Writers
Paris (ESA) Sep 15, 2023

Are you a creative visionary with a passion for climate action? Enter ESA's latest competition to showcase your talent by transforming decades of satellite climate data into impactful visuals to help bridge the gap between climate science, policy makers and the wider public. The winner will have the unique opportunity to display their data visualisation at the 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28) taking place later this year.

Satellite imagery, and other data, have helped record how Earth's environment has changed over the past five decades, advancing scientific knowledge of the climate.

However, the sheer volume and intricacy of this data can sometimes prove daunting for the general audience, leading to frustration and discouragement, especially in the face of contradictory information.

Visualisations have the power to distil this mass of information to effectively communicate new climate research and bridge the gap between climate science and policy makers and raise awareness among the wider public.

Susanne Mecklenburg, Head of ESA's Climate Office, comments, "Engaging imagery or art can powerfully illustrate and raise awareness of environmental phenomena, developing trends or impacts such the changing pattern of drought, wildfires or heatwaves.

"Data visualisation helps to show the facts, something that is increasingly important to support accurate communication of new science at a time when mis- and disinformation around research is becoming more of an issue."

The Little Pictures of Climate competition invites creative experts and enthusiasts across Europe to access and illustrate freely accessible climate datasets available from ESA, European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (Eumetsat) and European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) and highlight key aspects of Earth's changing system.

To kick-off the creative process, explore the following gallery of data-driven Little Pictures designed by ESA designers:

Entries will be judged by visualisation experts including the father of the famous climate stripes, Ed Hawkins of the University of Reading and journalist Matthias Stahl of the der Spiegel newspaper.

Each submitted climate data visualisation will be evaluated for its clarity of message, design aesthetic, novelty and accessibility.

The winner will also be invited to visit ESA's data visualisation centre, the Phi Experience at ESA's Centre for Earth Observation in Frascati, Italy, while the 10 runners up will have their visualisation added to ESA's visualisation gallery, along with judges' commendations.

To enter, visit ESA's climate website where aspiring entrants can access a range of climate datasets, view a gallery of worked visualisation examples and step-by-step tutorials. The deadline for entry is 15 November 2023.