Outstanding presentation sets apart AP’s analysis of global warming and its impact on population centers worldwide.
Data journalist Nicky Forster and science writer Drew Costley worked for months producing an immersive interactive that takes readers on a tour of the globe, visualizing how and where exposure to extreme heat is escalating and its impact on population centers.
The project got underway after Forster secured early access to historical data from Columbia University, the European Union and the University of California, Santa Barbara, tracking both population growth and a metric — wet-bulb globe temperature — that gauges the impact of extreme heat on human health by taking into account factors such as wind speed and cloud cover.
The AP analysis found that between 1983 and 2016, exposure to dangerous heat tripled and now affects about a quarter of the world’s population. The most affected region, by far, was southern Asia, where India alone accounted for 37% of the population living in areas with an increasing extreme heat trend.
Forster and Andrew Milligan of AP’s Data Team spent weeks writing the code to visualize the data in an engaging 3D display, while Costley reached out to experts, reporting on the health impact of rising temperatures. Immersive storytelling producer Peter Hamlin provided illustrations that brought the presentation to life, and reporter Victoria Milko fed helpful perspective from Indonesia, which plans to relocate its capital from Jakarta to address heat concerns.
A military truck drives on a flooded toll road following heavy rains in Jakarta, Indonesia, Feb. 20, 2021. Indonesia is planning to relocate the country’s capital from Jakarta — a city that is sinking below sea level — to Kalimantan.
AP Photo / Dita Alangkara
A migrant day laborer bathes at a public well pump on a hot morning in New Delhi, India, May 17, 2016. Scorching summer temperatures, hovering well over 40 degrees Celsius (104 F) make life extremely tough for millions of poor across northern India. Without access to air conditioning and sometimes even an electric fan, they struggle to cope with the heat.
AP Photo / Altaf Qadri
A farmworker wipes away sweat while working in St. Paul, Ore., July 1, 2021, as a heat wave baked the Pacific Northwest in record-high temperatures.
AP Photo / Nathan Howard
A slum for people who work in a saw mill sits within sight of downtown Lagos, Nigeria, May 12, 2020. A climate professor at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Dim Coumou, says the combination of growth in African cities and climate change presents a serious risk. “As the population increases in these megacities, you have more buildings, more concrete and an increased heat-island effect, making the heat waves worse,” Coumou says. “I think it’s a dangerous combination.”
AP Photo / Sunday Alamba
An elderly man suffering from heatstroke waits for a medical help at a local hospital in Karachi, Pakistan, June 26, 2015, during a heat wave in southern Pakistan.
AP Photo / Shakil Adil
Rickshaw pullers wait for passengers in Dhaka, Bangladesh, July 11, 2018. In Dhaka, the population more than tripled between 1983 and 2016, to some 24 million people. While the city grew, the number of extreme heat days also increased by 1.5 days a year, until Dhaka experienced about 50 more dangerously hot days a year than it did in 1983.
AP Photo / A.M. Ahad
Visitors to the interactive at apnews.com were taken to literal hot spots around the world. In Samarinda, Indonesia, the story noted people could expect 19 more days of extreme heat in 2016 compared with 1983. Mokpo, South Korea, farther from the equator, didn’t have an extreme heat event until 2013, when it had three. Cities like Mokpo that are just now experiencing dangerous heat more regularly are at risk of being caught unprepared, the story noted.
The interactive marked the latest example of AP’s new storytelling formats, and stood out from the deluge of climate coverage during the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Scotland. Readers spent an average of nearly four minutes on the page — remarkably high engagement — and The Poynter Institute noted the piece in its daily media newsletter.
For their resourcefulness, creativity and dedication in helping AP’s audience understand the far-ranging impact of global warming in a new way, the team of Forster, Costley and Hamlin is this week’s Best of the Week — First Winner.
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