GC Insights: Rainbow colour maps remain widely used in the geosciences

Westaway, Richard M.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/gc-5-83-2022

Articles | Volume 5, issue 1

https://doi.org/10.5194/gc-5-83-2022

© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Special issue:

GC Insights

https://doi.org/10.5194/gc-5-83-2022

© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 5, issue 1

GC Insights

|

11 Mar 2022

GC Insights |

| 11 Mar 2022

GC Insights: Rainbow colour maps remain widely used in the geosciences

Richard M. Westaway

Data sets

Rainbow colour maps remain widely used in the geosciences Richard M. Westaway https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5566884

Rainbow color map distorts and misleads research in hydrology – guidance for better visualizations and science communication Michael Stoelzle https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5145746

Short summary

Rainbow and red–green colour schemes are widely used in scientific publications despite being known to be problematic, particularly to people with colour blindness. This study investigates to what extent such colour schemes are used in geoscience publications. Based on a desk survey of over 2500 papers from six journals between 2005 and 2020, it is found that over half of the published papers have maps or graphs with colour issues that are therefore potentially misleading to readers.