Cities with Best (and Worst) Weather, 2021 edition

An analysis of NCEI GSOD weather data with a subsequent ranking of World and U.S. cities in terms pleasant weather. Count of pleasant days and calculation of excess degree-days are used as two different approaches, returning similar (yet not identical) results.

Author

Affiliation

Taras Kaduk

 

Published

March 14, 2021

Citation

Kaduk, 2021

Summary

In this post, I examine NCEI’s GSOD (Global Summary of the Day) data (DOC/NOAA/NESDIS/NCDC n.d.) and attempt to determine which cities in the world, as well as in the United States, have the most pleasant weather for human habitation.

Following my earlier blog posts “Where are the places with the best (and the worst) weather in the United States?” and “Measuring Excess Degree-Days in the Context of Location Comfort and Liveability”, this post will rank U.S. and world cities using two separate approaches: my original approach to classify each day as pleasant or not (hot, cold, having precipitation), as well as my calculation of excess degree-days.

The classification of days into distinct categories of pleasant / hot / cold / elements is easier from a communication standpoint, i.e. it is more intuitive. The main problem with it, however, is in its key feature: it creates distinct categories out of continuous variables. Not only that, it also employs several such breaks, each of which is arbitrary to some extend, and the final result of checking every day against this set of parameters being even more arbitrary.

For this ranking, I have expanded my original criteria to account for a greater range of people’s perceptions of weather. A pleasant day will thus be determined as one where:

The calculation of excess degree-days, on the other hand, is the reverse side of the previous algorithm in term of benefits and drawbacks. While it is much less intuitive and more complex in calculation (using trigonometry and integral calculus), it is a continuous scale that doesn’t create arbitrary breaks. Additionally, it only requires one baseline input, and while it can be somewhat subjective as to what a baseline temperature should be, the change in the baseline does not sway the calculation too much, keeping the ranking mostly in order. Aside from all this, however, the Excess Degree-Days metric (or EDD for short) does not incorporate the rain/snow variable, and only focuses on the daily temperatures.

https://taraskaduk.com/posts/2019-11-11-excess-degree-days/

For this ranking, the baseline and the calculations are in line with the above cited post: 18°C (64.5°F) is the starting point.

Results

Each chart is a ranking of 50 cities, best or worst, with #1 spot being best or worst, respective of the ranking (best of all best 50 or worst of all worst 50). Both “Pleasant days” and “Excess Degree-Days” charts are provided. Furthermore, “Excess Degree-Days” is rendered in two versions red-yellow-green-blue gradient, as well as colorblind-friendly red-white-blue gradient.

Each circle depicts 10 years, from 2011 through 2020, with 2011 as innermost layer and 2020 as outermost, with days moving clockwise from January 1 at 12:00 position, April 1 at 3:00 position, and so on.

Best world cities

These are the rankings of cities with the best weather: most pleasant days / lowest total excess-degree days.

Worst world cities

These are the rankings of cities with the worst weather: fewest pleasant days / highest total excess-degree days.

While the “best” cities overlap between the two rankings, this is clearly not the case for the other side: in the “pleasant days” ranking, we see all the cities with hot climate year-round, while the EDD ranking shows us mostly cold cities. This is due to the fact that while each day in the hottest climate can be too warm to be pleasant or comfortable, the temperature does go up as much as it goes down. I.e. a very cold day in Siberia is many more degrees away from human comfort than a very hot day in Southeast Asia.

This is not a flaw in the post, but rather a feature, and this discrepancy is a live illustration of a different mechanism of the two metrics.

Largest world cities

In the final “World” segment, rather than finding “best” or “worst” cities by each metric, I isolated 50 most populous cities first, and then ranked them accordingly, best to worst.

World cities data table

Pleasant days in world cities over 1,000,000 people

ABCDEFGHIJ0123456789
city
<fct>
country
<chr>
population
<dbl>
pleasant
<dbl>
hot
<dbl>
cold
<dbl>
elements
<dbl>
unknown
<dbl>
ArequipaPeru100829034900142
SantiagoChile700700034201192
San JoseUnited States179810333032300
San FranciscoUnited States359229432922330
Los AngelesUnited States12750807324190220
TijuanaMexico2384609320250200
GuadalajaraMexico525300031670402
ZapopanMexico115579031670402
HarareZimbabwe1606000315203413
San DiegoUnited States3220118312320200
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67
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1-10 of 668 rows

Excess Degree-Days in world cities over 1,000,000 people

ABCDEFGHIJ0123456789
city
<fct>
country
<chr>
population
<dbl>
edd_total
<dbl>
edd_hot
<dbl>
edd_cold
<dbl>
LimaPeru984800012251098128
CallaoPeru112985412251098128
NairobiKenya55450001253850404
MeruKenya18330001256768488
MedellínColombia252940312801037243
San DiegoUnited States32201181374781592
TijuanaMexico23846091378732646
Addis AbabaEthiopia30410021422637785
BogotáColombia946400014781286192
QuitoEcuador201138814944791015
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67
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1-10 of 668 rows

Pleasant days in world cities over 500,000 people

ABCDEFGHIJ0123456789
city
<fct>
country
<chr>
population
<dbl>
pleasant
<dbl>
hot
<dbl>
cold
<dbl>
elements
<dbl>
unknown
<dbl>
ArequipaPeru100829034900142
SantiagoChile700700034201192
CochabambaBolivia63201333611263
EnsenadaMexico52276833352260
San JoseUnited States179810333032300
San FranciscoUnited States359229432922330
San Luis PotosíMexico82422932859212
QuerétaroMexico80466332712332
AguascalientesMexico93442432553302
Los AngelesUnited States12750807324190220
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119
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1-10 of 1,182 rows

Excess Degree-Days in world cities over 500,000 people

ABCDEFGHIJ0123456789
city
<fct>
country
<chr>
population
<dbl>
edd_total
<dbl>
edd_hot
<dbl>
edd_cold
<dbl>
TrujilloPeru919899989869120
LimaPeru984800012251098128
CallaoPeru112985412251098128
NairobiKenya55450001253850404
MeruKenya18330001256768488
MedellínColombia252940312801037243
BelloColombia51967012801037243
VillavicencioColombia5276681284881402
San DiegoUnited States32201181374781592
TijuanaMexico23846091378732646
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119
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1-10 of 1,182 rows

United States

For the United States, there are 46 metro areas that are over 1,000,000 people (according to the data from simplemaps.com), and therefore I simply decided to get 50 largest total cities: this way, “cities over 1M people with best weather” and “most populous cities ranked” are the same chart, while “worst weather” ranking is the same chart read backwards: #50 to #1.

United States cities data tables

Pleasant days in United States cities over 1,000,000 people

ABCDEFGHIJ0123456789
city
<fct>
admin_name
<chr>
population
<dbl>
pleasant
<dbl>
hot
<dbl>
cold
<dbl>
elements
<dbl>
unknown
<dbl>
San JoseCalifornia179810333032300
San FranciscoCalifornia359229432922330
Los AngelesCalifornia12750807324190220
San DiegoCalifornia3220118312320200
RiversideCalifornia2107852284571250
SacramentoCalifornia18980192714516340
SeattleWashington3789215229066840
Las VegasNevada210419821612515160
PhoenixArizona42196972031482230
PortlandOregon20747752038711060
Next
12345
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1-10 of 46 rows

Excess Degree-Days in United States cities over 1,000,000 people

ABCDEFGHIJ0123456789
city
<fct>
admin_name
<chr>
population
<dbl>
edd_total
<dbl>
edd_hot
<dbl>
edd_cold
<dbl>
San DiegoCalifornia32201181374781592
Los AngelesCalifornia127508071611945666
San FranciscoCalifornia359229416614151246
San JoseCalifornia179810317685331235
RiversideCalifornia210785224011549851
New OrleansLouisiana102088625671965602
SacramentoCalifornia1898019258311401444
JacksonvilleFlorida118149625832010573
SeattleWashington378921526823582324
TampaFlorida290806326872458229
Next
12345
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1-10 of 46 rows

Pleasant days in United States cities over 500,000 people

ABCDEFGHIJ0123456789
city
<fct>
admin_name
<chr>
population
<dbl>
pleasant
<dbl>
hot
<dbl>
cold
<dbl>
elements
<dbl>
unknown
<dbl>
San JoseCalifornia179810333032300
San FranciscoCalifornia359229432922330
Los AngelesCalifornia12750807324190220
Mission ViejoCalifornia590249320180270
ConcordCalifornia652308314511360
San DiegoCalifornia3220118312320200
RiversideCalifornia2107852284571250
BakersfieldCalifornia5792952783634240
SacramentoCalifornia18980192714516340
SeattleWashington3789215229066840
Next
123456
...
9
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1-10 of 83 rows

Excess Degree-Days in United States cities over 500,000 people

ABCDEFGHIJ0123456789
city
<fct>
admin_name
<chr>
population
<dbl>
edd_total
<dbl>
edd_hot
<dbl>
edd_cold
<dbl>
San DiegoCalifornia32201181374781592
Los AngelesCalifornia127508071611945666
San FranciscoCalifornia359229416614151246
San JoseCalifornia179810317685331235
Mission ViejoCalifornia5902491824996828
ConcordCalifornia65230820736121461
HonoluluHawaii8209872270225416
RiversideCalifornia210785224011549851
CharlestonSouth Carolina62837724841578906
Palm BayFlorida50700225392337202
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9
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1-10 of 83 rows

Discussion

A person familiar with locations of many top cities in these ratings will recognize that many of these places are located in in rather specific zones: proximity a sea/ocean and elevation being two factors that deliver mild and pleasant climate.

Indeed, determining Köppen climate zones for all locations and then finding an average amount of pleasant days and average amount of excess degree-days shows that cities with most pleasant weather (by any of the two metrics) are located in Cwb (Subtropical highland) and Csb (Warm-summer Mediterranean) climate zones: both very mild temperate climates.

Methodology

All code required for this analysis can be found in the taraskaduk/weather repo. All analysis, with the exception of the plot generation, is written is a {drake} plan (Landau 2018). A more detailed post explaining the process is in the works, but in a meantime, the basic outline of the process is the following:

Footnotes

    References

    DOC/NOAA/NESDIS/NCDC. n.d. “Global Surface Summary of the Day - GSOD.” DOC/NOAA/NESDIS/NCDC. Accessed February 18, 2019. https://data.noaa.gov/dataset/dataset/global-surface-summary-of-the-day-gsod.

    Kaduk, Taras. 2019a. “Taras Kaduk: Measuring Excess Degree-Days in the Context of Location Comfort and Liveability.” https://taraskaduk.com/posts/2019-11-11-excess-degree-days/.

    ———. 2019b. “Taras Kaduk: Where Are the Places with the Best (and the Worst) Weather in the United States?” https://taraskaduk.com/posts/2019-02-18-weather/.

    Landau, William Michael. 2018. “The Drake R Package: A Pipeline Toolkit for Reproducibility and High-Performance Computing.” Journal of Open Source Software 3 (21). https://doi.org/10.21105/joss.00550.

    Pebesma, Edzer. 2018. “Simple Features for R: Standardized Support for Spatial Vector Data.” The R Journal 10 (1): 439–46. https://doi.org/10.32614/RJ-2018-009.

    Sparks, Adam H, Tomislav Hengl, and Andrew Nelson. 2017. “GSODR: Global Summary Daily Weather Data in R.” The Journal of Open Source Software 2 (10). https://doi.org/10.21105/joss.00177.

    Wickham, Hadley, Mara Averick, Jennifer Bryan, Winston Chang, Lucy D’Agostino McGowan, Romain François, Garrett Grolemund, et al. 2019. “Welcome to the tidyverse.” Journal of Open Source Software 4 (43): 1686. https://doi.org/10.21105/joss.01686.

    Citation

    For attribution, please cite this work as

    Kaduk (2021, March 14). Taras Kaduk: Cities with Best (and Worst) Weather, 2021 edition. Retrieved from https://taraskaduk.com/posts/2021-03-14-best-weather-2/

    BibTeX citation

    @misc{kaduk2021cities,
  author = {Kaduk, Taras},
  title = {Taras Kaduk: Cities with Best (and Worst) Weather, 2021 edition},
  url = {https://taraskaduk.com/posts/2021-03-14-best-weather-2/},
  year = {2021}
}

    © Copyright 2017 Taras Kaduk.

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    Original text and figures are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial CC BY-NC 4.0.