Turning Climate Data into Action: The Role of Teal and WEMC
At the heart of science — and especially climate science — lies data. While experiments and theories shape our understanding, it’s data that turns observation into knowledge, and knowledge into action. At WEMC, we believe that the power of data lies not just in its precision, but in its accessibility and relevance to real-world challenges.
But what exactly is climate data?
Climate data is structured information — often numerical — representing variables such as surface temperature, wind speed, precipitation, energy output, and greenhouse gas emissions, typically spanning decades. These large datasets, drawn from reanalysis, models, and observations, are foundational for the tools and decisions that shape our energy systems and climate resilience strategies.
From Complexity to Clarity
However, navigating this data is no simple task. Climate models and forecasts can involve terabytes of information, making it difficult even for seasoned experts to interpret. This is where data visualisation plays a crucial role — not just for technical insight, but for communication, learning, and decision-making. It helps us spot trends, compare regions, track change over time, and extract meaning from complexity.
Why Traditional Tools Fall Short
Scientific fields have long relied on visualisation tools like in graphs, histograms, pie charts, box plots, violin plots — paired with software like Jupyter Notebooks, Python libraries, or PowerBI dashboards. But these traditional tools have limitations.
They often require technical expertise — a background in science or statistics, training in data tools, and confidence navigating complex user interfaces. As a result, they’re often out of reach for the very audience who most urgently need to engage with climate data: policymakers, business leaders, educators, community planners, and students.
This gap between data availability and data accessibility is where WEMC’s Teal application comes in.
Teal: Making Climate Data Understandable for All
To better serve a broader audience and support informed climate decision-making, WEMC developed Teal — an intuitive, visually engaging platform designed for users with little to no technical background.
Created in collaboration with science communicators and educators, including those in the K–12 sector, Teal provides a user-friendly gateway to explore and understand climate data and the dynamics of climate change.
Unlike traditional scientific tools, Teal’s interface is designed to be as intuitive and attractive as commercial applications. With no manual required, users are encouraged to explore and learn through experience.
Key features include:
- A rotating 3D globe that displays data like CO₂ emissions or temperature anomalies by country or region
- Click-and-explore functionality, allowing users to generate line charts for temperature, precipitation, and other variables from 1950 to projected 2100 values
- Downloadable visualisations and underlying datasets
- A chatbot-style guide that helps new users navigate and understand the tool’s capabilities
Scaling Impact Through Teal Variants
The original Teal’s success has led to a growing ecosystem of specialised versions tailored to regional or organisational needs:
- Proprietary versions for commercial and institutional users
While each version is adapted to its context, they all share the same mission: an easy-to-use, visually rich platform for exploring geographically linked climate and energy datasets.
- These platforms include additional data layers such as: Population statistics
- Energy production and use (e.g., wind, solar, hydropower)
- Weather forecasts and station observations
In the case of FOCUS-Africa Teal, users can even access seasonal rainfall forecasts and downloadable reports aimed at practical decision-making — for example, for farmers in East Africa.
A Framework for the Future
As the number of Teal instances grew, WEMC made a strategic shift to build a unified Teal Framework — a modular software architecture that allows rapid and consistent deployment of new Teals without duplicating code.
This shift ensures:
- Easier maintenance and updates
- Greater flexibility and customisation
- Faster rollout of new platforms for new audiences and new datasets
In our next blog post, we’ll go deeper into the Teal Framework, how it works, and what it means for the future of accessible climate data.
