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.
The climate stripes, created by Professor Ed Hawkins at the University of Reading in 2018, show clearly and vividly how global average temperatures have risen over nearly two centuries.
Each stripe represents the average temperature for a single year, relative to the longer-term average temperature. Shades of blue indicate cooler-than-average years, while red shows years that were hotter than average.
The deep red stripes on the right-hand side of the graphic are a stark reminder of the rapid heating our planet has seen in recent decades.
Stripes have been created for almost every country in the world, and even for individual US states, English counties and oceans. All of them portray the same message – that climate change is impacting every inch of our planet right now.
