Niko Kommenda

Hi there! I'm a data and visual journalist with 9 years of experience working at the Washington Post, the Guardian and the Financial Times.

I'm passionate about finding patterns, outliers and unique narratives in data and presenting them through powerful interactive visuals.

On this page you'll find a selection of my favourite projects from the last couple of years.

Which U.S. cities have the most trees?

Which U.S. cities have the most trees?

2025

Data highlights

  • Matched U.S. cities to peer cities based on geographical proximity, climate and population density
  • Investigated policies and practices in outlier cities where tree cover is much higher or lower than expected

Visual highlights

  • Interactive lookup tool (mapbox-gl-js) for neighbourhood-level data
  • SimCity-style isometric views of example cities from Google Earth Studio

Deadly rivers in the sky

2025

Data highlights

  • Identified rainfall trends and extremes across 40 years of daily gridded data
  • Combined rainfall and atmospheric moisture records to identify 'compound events' with the strongest climate change link

Visual highlights

  • mapbox-gl-js globe with video layers, visualising moisture plumes in the atmosphere

Extreme heat and the human limit

2023

Data highlights

  • Collaborated with external scientists to model extreme heat days in unprecedented detail
  • Reported on the ground in Kolkata, India, mapping urban heat inequality with mobile weather sensors

Visual highlights

  • Maps, videos and 3D reconstruction of affected neighbourhoods in Kolkata
  • mapbox-gl-js globe and animated maps of extreme heat days around the world
2020 U.S. elections

2020 U.S. elections

2020

Data highlights

  • nodeJS/AWS data pipeline fetching data from Associated Press every 15s

Visual highlights

  • Live-updating React page with results ticker, maps and battleground states
  • Custom cartogram for House of Representatives results