Visualising Complex Weather and Climate Data at 52°North

I-CISK is an EU funded project involving universities and stakeholders across Europe and beyond, including farmers engaged through so-called “Living Labs.” Its goal is to mitigate climate change impacts by forecasting changes in variables like rainfall patterns and river flow, enabling communities to adapt more effectively. During an eight week internship at 52°North, Nick van Nuland contributed to this initiative, focusing primarily on the Spanish Living Lab in Andalusia.

At the Spanish Living Lab, he worked with weather and climate data to visualize past trends and predict future scenarios. The webapp was written in R, a programming language he was familiar with but hadn’t fully mastered. Nick focused on creating visualizations to make complex data more accessible to farmers. The goal was to provide them with information that could help them adapt their agricultural practices to changing climate conditions.

One of the highlights of his work was analyzing historical weather patterns and simulating future scenarios. These forecasts aimed to help farmers anticipate the amount of expected rainfall in the coming season, as can be seen in the figure.

During his internship, he improved his skills in R and also learned new technologies like React, a JavaScript library for building user interfaces. Working on the front end of data visualization tools helped him explore a new area of work. He also gained a better understanding of how remote sensing data can be applied to real-world problems. “Coming from an academic background, it was satisfying to see how the data and methods I had studied could help in real world scenarios.”

Nick has decided to stay on at 52°North to write his Master’s thesis and continue working on the I-CISK project.