TidyTuesday (2026) Week 13: Coastal Ocean Temperature by Depth

This week we’re exploring over 7 years of daily coastal ocean temperatures at 7 depths from a location in Nova Scotia, Canada. The data was collected through the Centre for Marine Applied Research’s Coastal Monitoring Program. This and related data sets can be downloaded from the Nova Scotia Open Data Portal.

A heatmap of Nova Scotia Ocean Temps over time

1. Python code

import pandas as pd
import numpy as np
import plotly.express as px

ocean_temperature = pd.read_csv('https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rfordatascience/tidytuesday/main/data/2026/2026-03-31/ocean_temperature.csv')

ocean_temperature_deployments = pd.read_csv('https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rfordatascience/tidytuesday/main/data/2026/2026-03-31/ocean_temperature_deployments.csv')

df = ocean_temperature

df['date'] = pd.to_datetime(df['date'])

df['month'] = df['date'].dt.strftime('%B')

df['year'] = df['date'].dt.strftime('%Y')

summary = df.groupby(['month', 'year']).agg (mean = ("mean_temperature_degree_c", "mean")).reset_index()

month_order = ['January', 'February', 'March', 'April', 'May', 'June', 'July', 'August', 'September', 'October', 'November', 'December']

summary['month'] = pd.Categorical(summary['month'], categories= month_order, ordered = True)

summary = summary.sort_values(['year', 'month']).reset_index(drop=True)

pivot = summary.pivot(index = "month", columns="year", values='mean' ).round(2)

fig = px.imshow(pivot,
  labels = dict(x = "Year", y = "Month", color="Mean Temp (°C)"),
  color_continuous_scale="RdBu_r",
  aspect="auto",
  text_auto= True,
  title = "Mean Temperature of Nova Scotia Ocean",
  width=500,
  height=500)

fig.show()