I hate it when climate pictures just make the highest temperatures bright red.
Because using the emotional response to colors is not scientific. It just makes science look like propaganda.
Because using the emotional response to colors is not scientific. It just makes science look like propaganda.
The issue though is where to draw the center between blue and red? Like, when do we transition from light blue to light red? The average temperature? the freezing point? And even then, what color goes in the middle? White, grey, and black are common, but not necessarily natural or perfect options.
One solution is to use a sequential, non-diverging color map that starts at white/light red, and gets more red with higher temperature (or blue, or green). But then we miss out on that intuitive blue/red relationship, and people may have a hard time interpreting "light red" as a low, cold temperature.