HNY! 🎉 The Best New Year's Maps 📰

New minimum wages, 2024's riskiest countries, & When is NYE in Antarctica? (📰 map news series)

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🎉 The Best New Years Maps 🎉

Here’s my picks for the most interesting maps that recap, predict, and visualize 2023/2024:

📍 Who Celebrates The New Year First?

📍 Don’t Travel There In 2024

📍 Lots of Big Elections This Year!

📍 Minimum Wages Go Up in 22 States

📍 Your Chances of a White Christmas

📍 The Hottest Summer Ever

📍 The State of the World’s Population

📍 Total Eclipse 2024

📍 Gott Nytt År! …

📍 Who Celebrates The New Year First? I’ve covered some of this cocktail trivia gold before (see The Earliest Place on Earth), but the strangeness of time zone politics makes for a much more complex map of the new year than you might think…

Highlights include:

• The Pacific island nation of Kiribati rang in 2024 first, despite the fact that it is roughly in line with Hawaii which hit the new year a full day later!

• American Samoa is usually credited as the last place to say goodbye to the year (though there are a few small uninhabited islands that are actually an hour later). It’s sister island Samoa (a completely different independent nation) is a day ahead.

• People in western China call the new year 3 hours before their immediate neighbors in Pakistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgystan do. You could jump the border and have 3 more hours of 2023!

• Lastly, Antarctica’s new year is all over the map, literally. Researchers holed up in the South Pole go on the same time as their comrades at the other American-led station McMurdo, but theoretically the new year comes and goes every hour for a full 24 hours there (since it basically sits at the junction of all the world’s time zones).

The time to ring in the new year is wildly different from country to country, even if they're feet from each other! From L to R: Kiribati is first in the world, Antarctica is all over the map, & China is 3 hours ahead of its neighbors (from National Geographic).

📍 Don’t Travel There In 2024. This map from travel risk analysts Riskline & Safeture highlights the most and least risky places for travel in 2024. Most is not surprising with places like Haiti, Venezuela, and Afghanistan topping the list. That said, Peru is also up there in the top 5, which personally surprised me. If you’re curious to delve further, International SOS also released a 2024 global risk map, which is interactive and includes climate change risk and mental health risk. It’s just not as pretty as this one :) …

📍 Lots of Big Elections This Year! The world’s countries will hold a significant amount of pivotal elections this year. As Foreign Policy noted, 7 of the 10 largest countries have national elections slated for this year. Many of them are considered to be taking place at critical points for the state of their respective democracies…

Seven of the world’s most populous countries are slated to have national elections in 2024 (from Foreign Policy).

53 countries are expected to hold national elections in 2024 (from Foreign Policy).

Per Foreign Policy magazine, only 15% of those countries can be considered “full democracies.” And newsflash: the USA isn’t one of them! (from Foreign Policy).

📍 Minimum Wages Go Up In 22 States. A lot of US workers will see minimum wage bumps this year. Many of the increases are part of plans passed years ago and others are indexed to inflation. That said, 7 states plus DC will now have minimum of $15 or more. The $15 mark was previously seen as a major goal post, though current rates of inflation have dimmed that goal’s intended impact. Washington state has the highest minimum wage at $16.28 per hour. The federal minimum wage, however, has not increased from $7.25 per hour since 2009…

22 state minimum wages will increase in 2024, but the federal minimum wage will stay at $7.25, where it’s been since 2009 (from CNN).

📍 Your Chances of a White Christmas. The US NOAA published the historical probability of experiencing a “white Christmas” in the USA, based on climate data from 1991 to 2020. That said, they may want to update this based on the bombshell in the next map!…

📍 The Hottest Summer Ever. The summer of 2023 was the hottest global summer on record, by a lot. The NY Times breaks it down with a neat scrolling map story. Check it out here, or see some screenshots below. (click here for interactive map & story)…

Screenshots from NY Times interactive map of world temperatures during Summer 2023 (From NY Times).

📍 The State of the World’s Population. Visual Capitalist gave a nice representation of what 2023’s world population looks like. Newsflash: don’t mess with Asia…

The world’s population represented by 1 person per 1,000 actual people (from Visual Capitalist).

📍 Total Eclipse 2024. For the first time since 2017, a total solar eclipse will occur over the US. On April 8 2024, a good chunk of Northeastern, Midwestern, and Southern states will bear witness to this rare astronomical phenomenon. The below map shows the path it will take. If you’re not lucky enough to live in its path, there are plenty of celestial festivals you can join…

A total solar eclipse will pass through the US, from Texas to Maine, for the first time since 2017 (from greatamericaneclipse.com).

📍 Gott Nytt År! This cute map from data scientist Jakub Marian pops up regularly during this time of year among map nerds, so wanted to share with you!…

That it’s for now! Happy New Year everyone! 🎉

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