Heat, Ozone, and a New York Summer

An interactive Plotly presentation

9 November 2026

The question

How did heat, wind, and sunlight move with ozone across a New York summer?
Five months of daily measurements let us explore the pattern. The charts remain interactive, so every point can be inspected directly.
Use the arrow keys to move through the presentation

The dataset

NEW YORK AIR QUALITY // MAY TO SEPTEMBER 1973
153
daily observations

The built-in R dataset records ozone, solar radiation, wind speed, and temperature. Ozone was measured on 116 days.

01Ozoneparts per billion
02Temperaturedegrees Fahrenheit
03Windmiles per hour
04Solar radiationlangley units

Heat and ozone

INTERACTIVE SCATTER PLOT // HOVER FOR DAILY VALUES
Bubble size represents solar radiation. Color identifies the month.

The season in motion

INTERACTIVE TIMELINE // DRAG TO ZOOM

What the data shows

OBSERVED RELATIONSHIPS // COMPLETE OZONE RECORDS
0.7
correlation between temperature and ozone

Ozone increased on hotter days

The relationship is strong but not exact. Wind and solar radiation also varied across the season.

The highest reading occurred in August

Ozone reached 168 ppb on 25 August 1973, when the temperature was 81 F.

Interactive graphics created with Plotly in R Markdown