How to present your urban heat island data

You should now have come up with a way of presenting your data.

Here are three suggestions for you:

  1. Use a map that you can colour in yourself or add stickers to.

  1. Use Google Earth to show your findings (more tricky)

  1. Use Google Earth and a piece of free software called GEGraphs (most advanced)

…which even allows you to view the data in 3D!

install GEGraph free from

Once you have decided which type of presentation you are going to use then have a look at the instructions below:

  • Do you have all of the temperature data?
  • Do you have some colours or stickers? Do you have access to ICT?
  • Do you have Google Earth installed? Do you need GEGraphs?

You will be making a type of CHOROPLETH map – that is shaded differently according to what the temperature was. (like the ones on page 1)

  • How many categories do you need?
  • How many degrees Celsius should there be in each category?
  • Try out your key on a rough piece of paper. First try intervals of 10°C for each colour. How many people’s recordings do you have in each category? Is this a problem?
  • If so, try intervals of 5°C. Does this evenly space them out or are they all clumped into one category? Change it so that you have a good range in each of your categories.
  • Make sure that you are happy with your key and that you know what colour each site is going to be.

You are now ready to present!

Stickers or colouring pencils

If you decided to present using stickers or colours then you can now colour each site according to the key that you have just made. Make sure that you put the sticker accurately on your map.

If you are drawing on a square or circle to colour in yourself, use a ruler. Think how big you want it – what happens if it is too big? Or too small?

Using Google Earth

  1. Open up Google Earth. Zoom in until the area covered by your investigation fills the screen.
  1. In the ‘Layers’ menu on the left, click ‘roads’ to help you find out where your sites are
  2. Now click the ‘placemark’ icon on the top toolbar
  1. A box should open up. Left click and drag the placemark pin to the location of site number 1. In the popup box type the temperature that you measured here. Eg 18.5°C
  1. Now click on ‘style, colour’ in the popup box. Now click BOTH of the white colour squares in turn and make them both the same colour as your key tells you to. Eg my key says 18.5°C is YELLOW, so I’ll make them both yellow.
  1. Click ok and your first point should appear. Go back to step 3 and repeat until you have pins for all of your measurements.
  1. Now click File, Save, Save image… to save your work. You can even paste it into a Word document ready to analyse (describe and explain)
  1. Remember that you can zoom in and out of the map on Google Earth to try to spot patterns. Look for map evidence that might help to explain your results.

Using Google Earth and also GE Graph

  1. You will need to know the latitude and longitude of each and every site that you collected temperatures from. Your teacher may give you this or you could find it yourself at Here, you can enter a postcode or OS grid reference and be given a latitude and longitude. Cut and paste the latitude and longitude values into the Excel spreadsheet so that you can use them later. Make sure you copy the DIGITAL lat/ long – the numbers in brackets.
  1. Open GEGraph. Add a title near the top right. “A map to show ……”
  1. Click Insert Row near the bottom right. Have as many rows as you have measurements.
  1. Now type in the latitude, longitude, site name and temperature recording by pasting them in from Excel.
  1. In the top left, click Flat and make sure that Size is ‘constant’. Colour should be ‘according to value’.
  1. Make sure the red writing in the middle ‘Open in GE’ has its box ticked.
  1. Underneath set the size to 50 and units: metres. This may need to be adjusted later.
  1. Alter the custom colour scale on the left, by clicking on the coloured boxes, so that Red is ‘Dark’ and Blue is ‘Light’. Then click ok. Next click the white rectangle on the custom colour scale so that 8 is selected. Also tick ‘show scale in GE’.
  1. You should be ready to have your first look at the data! Click Run at the top then save the file. It should automatically open in Google Earth.
  1. If you need to adjust anything, click back to the GE Graph screen and do so. Again click Run and save again. You will need to say ‘yes’ you do want to replace the file and then ‘yes’ again that you want to reopen it in Google Earth.
  1. What happens when you alter the ‘Polygon sides’ in GEGraph? Try clicking ‘3D’ in GEGraph?
  1. Remember that you can zoom in and out of the map on Google Earth to try to spot patterns. Look for map evidence that might help to explain your results.
  1. In Google Earth click File, Save, Save image… to save your work. You can even paste it into a Word document ready to analyse (describe and explain)