In summer of 2023, Hong Kong sweltered as world set heat record by Marcelo Duhalde

During the hottest days of each summer, the infographics desk in news media usually delivers pieces explaining how hot is the summer and how all the records have been surpassed, mainly due to climate change and global warming.
To offer something different, the team focused its attention on what special conditions make Hong Kong a hotter place every year, besides the normal rise of temperatures. We started our research by finding data and locations of the existing urban heat islands in Hong Kong, and after that, we visited some of those places to collect images and data about how the urban design affects the natural cooling capabilities of the city. All those findings allowed us to build comparisons and explainers, and to show how are livable conditions affected when the hot and very hot temperature warnings are announced by HK Observatory.
Analytical illustrations and simple diagrams were mainly used to explain the facts to the audience, this helped to organize the visual information more efficiently. The visualization used shows evidence of an increment in the frequency of hot temperatures over the years. Which is affecting the health and well-being of an increasing number of citizens.