Introducing the
Reuters Climate Monitor
Tracking climate change at the speed of news
Table of contents
❖   Who I am

❖   The problem with climate data

❖   How we think we can solve it

❖   What we’ve made

❖   We hear from you
Who I am
I’m Ben Welsh. I’m from Iowa.

I joined Reuters three years
ago.

I lead a specialized team that
automates data to cover
breaking news.
What does that look like?
❖   Our goal is to learn from the speed, scale
    and extreme success of live election
    results, coronavirus trackers and similar
    products

❖   Our automated systems collect raw data,
    refine them into journalism and then
    deliver charts, dashboards, databases
    and other outputs to our customers.

❖   With continual updates, interactive inputs
    and limitless scale, they serve clients and
    readers in ways a traditional story cannot.
For example…
We’ve developed a pipeline
that automatically plots data
using our newsroom’s
chart-marking tool.

It produces hundreds of
ready-to-run charts each
week, covering markets,
economics and public
opinion.
Aiming high
Because we focus on
coverage of the top
storylines, our automated
charts appear on Reuters
homepage more than five
times per week.
Our new front
Now we’re expanding our
focus to extreme weather,
another routine source of
breaking news.
The problem with climate data
❖   The challenge: Can our newsroom use
    data to better cover the day-to-day
    impact of climate change?

❖   The issue: Most climate data is global in
    scope, slow to update and centered on
    the upward creep of arcane statistics.

❖   The result: It has little to add to coverage
    of fast-moving catastrophes, such as last
    summer’s European heat wave. A key
    piece of context is missing from our
    reporting.
How we think we can solve it
❖   We sought out more timely climate
    coverage demands data that’s localized,
    easy to grasp and quick to update.

❖   We surveyed our competitors, interviewed
    more than a dozen climate experts and
    reviewed the open-source science.

❖   We found an emerging set of data sources
    yet to be fully utilized by the press that fit
    the bill.
The big idea
❖   Create a data dashboard that, by automatically
    comparing today’s weather against the historic
    record, identifies temperature extremes as they
    occur

❖   Deliver a comprehensive, real-time view of how
    climate change is unleashing dangerous new
    weather patterns, with the ability to focus in on
    any location on Earth

❖   Pass muster with the world’s leading climate
    scientists
What we’ve made
❖   A color-coded world map that highlights which
    areas are, right now, reporting significant
    temperature anomalies

❖   Interactive controls that allow readers to
    examine conditions in local areas they care
    about
Let’s have a look
We have a prototype that
we’re preparing to launch in
the weeks ahead.
The road to the finish line
❖   Calculate the number of people living in extreme
    conditions each day and identify today’s
    hotspots

❖   Forecast the temperature events into the
    near-term future, just like a traditional weather
    forecast

❖   Fuel reporting by our enterprise team into the
    impact of extreme temperatures
We hear from you
❖   Beyond temperature, what climate
    data would be most useful to you?
❖   What's a climate question your team
    gets asked that you can't currently
    answer with data?
❖   How could the news media do a
    better job covering climate with
    data?