Some of the R code I have previously posted here for working with NOAA’s optimal interpolated sea surface temperature (OISST) datasets made its way into a recent piece in a Nature news and commentary piece on open-source map-making tools by Jeffrey Perkel. The article details the expansion of open-source tools for visualizing spatial data that have become more prevalent and more powerful in open-source programs like R and Python. The author merged the sea surface temperature data with a leaflet map and hurricane track data from the National Hurricane Center.

The R code to merge the datasets and generate a colorful map is nicely laid out in this Rpub document.