In the last few weeks I’ve been working on a project to better communicate climate science. Inspired by the amazing work done by Mat Lipson, Steefan Contractor and James Goldie (check out their website isithotrightnow.com), I’ve made a tool to check if today is a climate extreme in various Spanish cities (currently 23).

Using historical and recent data from the Spanish Agency of Meteorology (AEMET), you can see today’s weather in a climate context. The data is updated every hour and the website compares temperature and precipitation over the last 24 hours with the historical record. With that information, it tells you whether a city is experiencing a climate extreme and how intense it is. Putting this information in a easy-to-understand way and showing a large amount of information through beautiful data visualization, it is possible to understand what the current weather means from a climate perspective.

In addition to current weather, it also shows how this year is doing so that you can check if the entire year is being particularly extreme in terms of both temperature and rainfall. For example, it analyses recent dry spells and heat waves (or warm spells in winter), and it provides a climate context to know how unusual they may be.

If you’re interested, visit hoyextremo.com to get a complete picture of weather and climate information in different locations across Spain. So far, the website includes information for A Coruña, Albacete, Almería, Avilés, Badajoz, Barcelona, Bilbao, Cádiz, Córdoba, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Logroño, Madrid, Málaga, Murcia, Palma, Pamplona, Salamanca, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Santander, Sevilla, Soria, Valencia y Zaragoza, but more will be added soon! The website is currently in Spanish, but we’re working to extend it to English. However, the data visualization is clear enough to be understood even by non-Spanish speakers.

Hope you enjoy it!!