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The latest data released by the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), show that the North Pacific and parts of the northern Atlantic near France and the UK experienced record heat in August, which was the third-warmest on record for both sea and air temperatures globally.

Scientists say these regional anomalies could be the result of heat stored in the oceans during the past two years of unprecedented global temperatures.

"Everybody thinks it is the atmosphere that is warming, but actually it is the ocean," said Sabrina Speich, a professor of physical oceanography and climate sciences at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, who added that the seas absorb the vast majority of excess heat and act as a "memory" for warmer air.

In many of these newsletters we have directed readers to various C3S data products -- whether via climate pulse, the climate data store or the monthly climate bulletins -- which have been incredibly useful to us in reporting and visualising the latest climate trends.

This month, the latter celebrates its 10-year anniversary (for a behind-the-scenes look at what goes into producing them, see their post here). During this time it has evolved from "barely having 700 words" and focusing exclusively on temperature, to the varied monthly output that we receive now -- complete with charts, maps, underlying data and thorough explanations of a large number of variables.

Julien Nicolas, senior scientist at the Climate Intelligence Team and contributor of the polar sections of the C3S bulletins, said that the records observed in the past three years were often "so striking that we've occasionally had to stop and triple check the data to make sure it was accurate."

"Even though what's happening to our climate is deeply concerning, seeing the impact of the information we produce keeps us motivated and inspired."

At a time when climate science faces both decommissioning and denial, reliable updates on the state of our climate -- grounded in scientific observation -- are invaluable.

For this week's climate graphic, we once again turned to the data published in this bulletin, mapping the regional ocean heat in the northern Pacific and Atlantic. (We have covered the process by which we map and chartify, sea surface temperatures/anomalies, sea ice records and hydrological variables in previous issues, if you drop us a message at climate@ft.com we can send you one of the earlier newsletters that steps through this in detail.)

One aspect of producing these climate maps which we don't always cover in much detail is how we select an appropriate map projection.

Different projections will emphasise, exaggerate, or minimise the relative size and shape of the world's regions. For a global dataset, an Equal Earth or Robinson projection might work well on desktop, less so on mobile. My colleague Steven Bernard has previously written about using orthographic globes on mobile to aid legibility. And a team at the Neue Zürcher Zeitung recently published a paper on the use of maps in data journalism and effective formats for mobile.

Beyond screen size, the choice of projection of course also depends on the story and data being presented. On previous stories about sea surface temperatures, we've experimented with less conventional projections, such as the Spilhaus projection, which shows the world's oceans as a single continuous body. It's striking, but the trade-off in legibility means it's not for everyday use in a news context.

While preparing the August sea surface temperature anomaly maps for this latest story, I had a bit of fun testing the data across different projections. Each one has its pros, its cons, its quirks -- and a few of the examples below (looking at you, Bonne) probably won't make it into a news story any time soon. Some projections prioritise aesthetics or familiarity, others accuracy and fairness of land area, some find a compromise.

In selecting which one to use, the climate data needs to be conveyed clearly and accurately, so readers can quickly take in the latest trends. In this case, we used three orthographic globes each centred on a different ocean, allowing us to highlight the different regional temperature anomalies.

Earlier this month, the World Meteorological Organization said that after a period of "neutral" conditions, La Niña cooling phase is now more likely than not to emerge in the Pacific in the coming months.

The agency added that this is unlikely to prevent global temperatures from staying above the long-term average.

How we made it: why the seas are getting hotter