iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Erwan Rivault @erwanrivault.com · 10/09/2026

New data released today by Copernicus shows western Europe has just experienced its hottest summer on record, averaging 2.5°C above normal, with parts of France recording summer temperatures up to 4.5°C above average. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Map of summer temperature anomalies across Europe, with parts of France more than 4°C above average. A chart below compares western Europe's summer temperatures since 1979, showing that 2026 was the hottest summer on record, exceeding the previous 2003 record by more than 0.5°C.

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Erwan Rivault @erwanrivault.com · 04/07/2026

Last week's heatwave broke more than 170 June temperature records across the UK, mostly in England and Wales, with some weather stations recording maximum temperatures up to 6C above previous records. Our analysis of the UK and Europe heatwave in 7 maps and charts: www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Map of the UK showing weather stations where June temperature records were broken. The stations are marked by triangles; the taller the peak, the bigger the gap between the old record and the new one. More than 170 weather stations broke their previous temperature record, mainly across England and Wales. A few local records were also broken in Scotland and Northern Ireland. The biggest record-breaking margin was Lingwood in Norfolk, which broke its previous June record by 6 degrees Celsius.

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Erwan Rivault @erwanrivault.com · 25/03/2026

I love a Sankey diagram that doubles as a map, and today's New York Times example (tracking oil and gas flows through the Strait of Hormuz) is especially brilliant! Reminds a lot of Minard’s famous visualisation of Napoleon’s 1812 Russian campaign of course. (I’ve rotated the NYT one horizontally)

New York Times Sankey diagram of oil and gas flow through the Strait of Hormuz, rotated horizontally

Charles Joseph Minard’s famous Sankey visualisation of Napoleon’s 1812 Russian campaign

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Erwan Rivault @erwanrivault.com · 19/03/2026

Massive 20km long oil spill visible in yesterday's Sentinel-2 satellite image following US strike on Iranian drone carrier Shahid Bagheri near Bandar Abbas.

Satellite image shows 20km long oil spill next to Strait of Hormuz, and a zoom on the Iranian drone carrier that was hit by US strike on 6 March.

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Erwan Rivault @erwanrivault.com · 07/03/2026

We’ve tracked A23a iceberg for a while now, but this is our last story about it! Once the world’s biggest (2x the size of Greater London), it drifted north up to 47ºN where warmer waters and seas broke it into smaller bergs, ending up as the world’s largest pool as melt ponds formed on its surface.

gallery of 9 satellite images from 3 January 2025 to 1 March 2026 showing A23a iceberg becoming smaller and smaller as smaller icebergs break away, and melt ponds appear on the surface.

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Erwan Rivault @erwanrivault.com · 16/01/2026

Scientists have just unveiled the most detailed data yet of the terrain hidden under Antarctica’s ice. We mapped it and compared it to the previously best available data for our story with @markpoynting.bsky.social www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Map of Antarctica's elevation beneath the ice. Blue areas indicate land below sea level, and brown areas indicate land above sea level. Large regions, especially in West Antarctica, lie below sea level. The new map reveals with more detail what landscape hides beneath the ice, with some corresponding photographs of similar landscapes in other parts of the world today, such as Alpine mountains, plateaus dissected by deep glacier-carved valleys, and flat plains.

Side-by-side maps comparing an older and a newer map of a zoomed area in East Antarctica’s elevation beneath the ice. Both maps use blue to show areas below sea level and brown to show areas above sea level. The newer map shows much finer detail, clearly revealing features such as the Golicyna Subglacial Highlands that are more difficult to distinguish on the older map.

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Erwan Rivault @erwanrivault.com · 23/10/2025

The Israeli military is placing large yellow blocks to delineate the newly established Yellow Line in Gaza - issue is, it’s off by over 500 meters in some areas, shrinking the Palestinian safe area. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Satellite image of north west Gaza shows position of Yellow line and 6 yellow blocks about 500m to the south, showing misalignment.

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Erwan Rivault @erwanrivault.com · 08/10/2025

Daily Chartle player? We’ve got an update for you 👀 You can now see how everyone else scored when you finish the game (this is today's game). Keep the feedback coming, it’s helping us make chartle.cc better!

Bar chart showing how many guesses players used to find the correct answer on chartle.cc

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Erwan Rivault @erwanrivault.com · 19/09/2025

Yes, you can! Open the expandable menu in the top-right corner, select "History", and choose any previous day to play - just be sure to remember the day for that dataset 🙂

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Erwan Rivault @erwanrivault.com · 15/09/2025

Once you have played (win or lose), you can share your results with friends or post it on social media. A personalised chart will show your guess history without revealing the countries, so it won’t give your friends any hints!

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Erwan Rivault @erwanrivault.com · 15/09/2025

You can also check your stats and start building a streak! It might look a little empty for now since we’re only 4 days in, but I’m excited to see how it will grow over the next weeks! You can log in with Google to ensure your scores are saved and play across multiple devices using the same account

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Erwan Rivault @erwanrivault.com · 15/09/2025

I’ll explain a bit more some of the functionalities and what’s happening behind the scenes here now that the game is live! If you didn’t play on a previous day, don’t panic! You can access the history to play past games and also see how many tries it took you to succeed on previous days.

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Erwan Rivault @erwanrivault.com · 12/07/2025

Parts of the Mediterranean Sea reached 30C this week, much earlier than usual, raising fears for marine life. For some areas, this is 6 or 7C warmer than usual at this time of year. Our story with more maps by @markpoynting.bsky.social and me here: www.bbc.com/news/article...

Map of sea surface temperatures in the Mediterranean Sea showing parts of it reached 30C such as off the coast of Calabria, and the islands of Majorca and Sicily. Below the map is a chart showing daily maximum temperature at a buoy next to Majorca where it reached 30C for the first time this early in the season.

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Erwan Rivault @erwanrivault.com · 20/06/2025

Excited to be at the Living Planet Symposium #LPS25 next week! I’ll be co-presenting with @janatausch.bsky.social on Thursday afternoon, sharing how we make innovative climate data visualisations in the BBC & FT newsrooms. Let me know if you’re around and want to grab a coffee and chat!

Living Planet Symposium conference promotional poster

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Erwan Rivault @erwanrivault.com · 04/03/2025

The world's largest iceberg, A23a, has now run aground in shallow waters about 80km from South Georgia island. I've mapped bathymetry data from @bas.ac.uk in Blender with the iceberg’s latest location to understand how this unfolded. With @georginarannard.bsky.social www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Map showing South Georgia island and the bathymetry around it, with overlaid the position of A23a iceberg, grounded on shallow seafloor south west of the island, about 80km away from it.

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Erwan Rivault @erwanrivault.com · 15/02/2025

The missing sea-ice is striking at both poles - particularly in Antarctica’s Weddell Sea and the Arctic’s Bering and Barents Seas.

Two maps showing sea-ice concentration on 12 February 2025 for both Antarctica and the Arctic. For each map, the median extent for the 1981-2010 period is shown and areas of missing sea-ice are visible.

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Erwan Rivault @erwanrivault.com · 15/02/2025

Both Arctic and Antarctic sea-ice extents are significantly below average for this time of year, with Arctic sea-ice currently at a daily record low.

Two multiple line charts showing daily sea-ice extent for the Arctic on one side, and Antarctica on the other side. Each line is a year, with 2025 line breaking a record daily low for the Arctic for the time of year, and just shy of the 2023 record daily low for Antarctica.

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Erwan Rivault @erwanrivault.com · 15/02/2025

NEW: Global sea-ice has fallen to a record low, breaking the previous minimum set in 2023. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Multiple line chart showing daily sea-ice extent for Antarctica and the Arctic combined. Each line is a year, with 2025 line breaking a record low on latest data of 13 February, breaking the previous record set in 2023.

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Erwan Rivault @erwanrivault.com · 01/02/2025

What would happen if key ocean currents that bring warm water from the tropics to the North Atlantic collapse? Temperatures in northern Europe would drop drastically, studies suggest. Our full story on the risks of AMOC collapse: www.bbc.com/news/article...

Map of Northern Europe showing how temperatures would change after eventual AMOC collapse. Cities like London, Reykjavik or Bergen would chill drastically, by almost 15C for some.

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Erwan Rivault @erwanrivault.com · 24/01/2025

New @planet.com satellite image shows massive oil spill stretching across the Kerch Strait, after severe weather damaged two oil tankers. Up to 5,000 tonnes of oil has leaked, with the spill now spreading to the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Satellite image from 10 January 2025 shows long oil spill of at least 25 km in the Kerch Strait

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Erwan Rivault @erwanrivault.com · 23/01/2025

After 30 years stuck on the seafloor, it embarked on a 2,000-mile journey across the Southern Ocean. It is now less than 300 km from South Georgia Island, potentially putting the penguins and seals there in danger if it drifts closer.

Map of the iceberg journey from where it broke off from in Antarctica, to where it currently is. Points are coloured by year. It was stuck on seafloor for 30 years, but got on the move in 2022, and moved along the seafloor ridge to now less than 300km of South Georgia island.

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Erwan Rivault @erwanrivault.com · 23/01/2025

The world's largest iceberg, A23a, is so big you can see it from 850,000 miles away via the DSCOVR EPIC satellite in Lagrange-1 point (the zoomed image is from MODIS).

Satellite image from DSCOVR EPIC showing the whole globe, with South America, Africa and Antarctica in view. Iceberg A23a is visible as a small white dot off the coast of Antarctica. A zoom in image from MDIS shows how close it is to South Georgia island.

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Erwan Rivault @erwanrivault.com · 10/01/2025

This new record beats last year's previous record, and makes the past 10 years the hottest on record. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Maps of air temperature anomaly foe each year since 1970 to 2024. Little maps are getting from blue to red with the last 10 years all very red as it is getting warmer than normal.

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Erwan Rivault @erwanrivault.com · 10/01/2025

NEW: 2024 has just been confirmed as the warmest year on record, and the first to breach the 1.5C threshold. We used a ridgeline (Joy Division inspired) chart to visualise daily temperature anomalies since 1940. 2024 clearly stands out with 100% of its days above 1.3C and 75% above 1.5C.

Ridgeline chart showing the distribution of global daily air temperature differences from the pre-industrial reference period (1850-1900), for every year between 1940 and 2024. Each individual year resembles a hill, shaded in a darker shade of red and further to the right for warmer years. The trend is clearly towards warmer years, with 2024 standing out as first year above 1.5C.

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Erwan Rivault @erwanrivault.com · 05/12/2024

Spotify wrapped cartographer's edition

Your most used reply to ChatGPT was “that doesn’t work” in Spotify wrapped style

You downloaded 278 GB of satellite imagery and only used 3% of it in Spotify wrapped style

You spent 1,589 minutes explaining why you shouldn't use a
Mercator projection for that map in Spotify wrapped style

You have 4,879 netcdf files in your downloads and they all have names like GEOS.fp.asm.inst1_2d_lfo_Nx.20230104_0300.V01.nc4 in Spotify wrapped style

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Erwan Rivault @erwanrivault.com · 15/11/2024

#30DayMapChallenge Day 15: My data Quick fun project: I was curious if the spare coins I had would tell much about me - where i'm from, where i live, and where I’ve traveled... So I stacked all the coins on my table and overlaid a European map, here's what it showed!

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Erwan Rivault @erwanrivault.com · 12/11/2024

#30DayMapChallenge Day 12: Time and space With the 2024-25 Vendée Globe sailing race now underway, I’ve brought the 2020-21 race to life by animating the tracks of all 33 competitors, with the winner's track highlighted

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Erwan Rivault @erwanrivault.com · 11/11/2024

#30DayMapChallenge Day 11: Arctic One year of MODIS daily mosaic images Did you know optical satellites like MODIS usually don't capture images over the poles in winter due to lack of sunlight? The "no data" hole grows as we near the winter solstice - and starts closing once daylight returns

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Erwan Rivault @erwanrivault.com · 06/11/2024

#30DayMapChallenge Day 6: Raster Ship density mapped with Bonne Projection 🖤

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Erwan Rivault @erwanrivault.com · 05/11/2024

#30DayMapChallenge Day 5: A Journey Only 5 days away from the start of the 2024-25 Vendée Globe sailing race, I mapped the tracks of the 33 competitors from the last edition in 2020-21.

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Erwan Rivault @erwanrivault.com · 03/11/2024

#30DayMapChallenge Day 3: Polygons Drawing bounding boxes for each African country 🟨🟦🟧

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Erwan Rivault @erwanrivault.com · 01/11/2024

First post on Bluesky! #30DayMapChallenge Day 1: Points Simple point map of tree cover in France 🟢

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