Today, the 21st of June thousands of people around the world will again unite against climate change by sharing a striking climate change visualisation.
The climate stripes infographic, created by Professor Ed Hawkins at the University of Reading, display rising annual temperatures in one clear image. No words. No numbers. No graphs. Just a series of vertical-coloured bars, showing the progressive heating of our planet in a single, striking image.
Professor Hawkins said: “The climate stripes show clearly how the world is heating up. What they will look like in the future depends entirely on our choices. The decisions we make now will be crucial to curbing the dramatic temperature rise seen across the world in recent decades.
“The aim of the climate stripes is to start conversations and bring climate science to new audiences. I am constantly amazed by the inventive ways that people use to adopt the stripes and hope they help bring climate action to the front of people’s minds once again this year.”
The climate stripes use bands of colour to show how temperatures in all corners of the world have risen dramatically in recent years. Shades of red are used to denote years that were hotter than the average for the period, and blues to indicate cooler years. They reveal a dramatic rise in temperatures in recent decades.
The climate stripes were created in 2018 and were made available for the public to download for free in summer 2019. More than a million people did so in the first week after they went live. People all over the world have downloaded the stripes showing how climate change is affecting where they live. These stripes have been shared on social media or displayed in inventive ways on the summer solstice for the past three years accompanied by the hashtag #ShowYourStripes.
The stripes have been adopted in countless ways, including the UN and on global television channels. They have inspired a range of clothing launched at London Fashion Week, displayed on badges worn by US senators, and have even been painted on a Tesla.
