R code to reproduce the awesome visualization of global temperature change from Ed Hawkins at http://www.climate-lab-book.ac.uk/2016/spiralling-global-temperatures/ using R and ggplot2 (with the animations package)

had_crut_spider_plot.R

library(dplyr)
library(tidyr)
library(ggplot2)
library(animation)
#Data from https://crudata.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/
#As well as data read in script
source("read_cru_hemi.R")
temp_dat <- read_cru_hemi("./HadCRUT4-gl.dat")

#remove cover
temp_dat_monthly <- temp_dat %>%
  select(-starts_with("cover")) %>%
  select(-starts_with("annual")) %>%
  gather(month, anomaly, -year) %>%
  mutate(month = gsub("month\\.", "", month)) %>%
  mutate(month = as.numeric(month)) %>%
  filter(year !=2016)

mo <- months(seq(as.Date("1910/1/1"), as.Date("1911/1/1"), "months"))
mo <- gsub("(^...).*", "\\1", mo)

saveGIF({
  
  for(i in 1850:2015){
    print(ggplot(temp_dat_monthly %>% filter(year <= i), 
           aes(x=month, y=anomaly, color=year, group=year)) +
        geom_line() +
        scale_color_gradient(low="blue", high="red", limits=c(1850, 2015), guide="none") +
        geom_hline(yintercept=1.5, color="black", lty=2) +
        geom_hline(yintercept=2, color="black", lty=2) +
        coord_polar() +
        annotate(x=1, y=-1.5, geom="text", label=i) +
        annotate(x=1, y=1.5, geom="label", label="1.5C", fill="white", label.size=0) +
        annotate(x=1, y=2, geom="label", label="2.0C", fill="white", label.size=0) +
        ggtitle("Global Temperature Change 1850-2015") +
        scale_x_continuous(labels=mo, breaks=1:13) +
        scale_y_continuous(labels=NULL, breaks=NULL) +
         ylab("") + xlab("")
       
  )}
}, interval=0.1)