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Although it may seem simple, this colorful striped design you see above revolutionized the way we visualize and communicate climate change.
It’s a pattern in which the stripes range from blue to redder tones to illustrate how the planet has warmed as humans have released more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
For a while it seemed like the so-called “warming streaks” were everywhere.
The image was adopted by activists around the world and even served as the cover for the book The Climate Book, by Greta Thunberg, as well as to illustrate the covers of printed editions of various international media.
Although the graphic managed to spread social awareness about climate change, global temperatures have continued to increase.
And in early 2024, the weather stripes had to be updated with an additional color at both ends: a darker blue and a darker red.
The reason was that in 2023 it was so hot that the team behind the stripes decided to change the scale.
And this situation continues.
Experts have confirmed that 2024 broke records and was the hottest year on record globally.
This means that the graph will have even darker red on the updated scale.
How the idea came about
In 2017, Ellie Highwood, then a professor of climate physics at the University of Reading, UK, posted a photograph on Twitter (now X) of a “global warming blanket” she had crocheted as a gift for a baby.
Highwood used data on average annual global temperature change to determine the color pattern.
I had no idea that a graphic version later created by a colleague would become a recognized symbol of climate change.
Unlike traditional data visualizations, the blanket only featured colors and looked more like a barcode than a normal graph with title, text, numbers, etc.
“Some people tune out as soon as they see a graph, right?” says Highwood.
On her blog, she shared instructions so others could replicate the blanket using yarn or other materials.
“The artisanal version does something different. “If you are physically reproducing the pattern, you are internalizing the data and are more likely to feel like it is real.”
When Ed Hawkins, a climate scientist and professor at the same university, saw the blanket and people’s positive reactions on the social network, he thought it would be a good way to visualize climate change data digitally.
He reduced the color range to shades of blue and red, usually associated with temperature on weather maps, and shared the graph with the public.
Years later, the image went viral.
The secret of success
Part of the success of the stripes is in their simplicity, how striking their colors are and how easy it is to draw a conclusion when seeing them: the temperature is increasing as time passes.
For Amanda Makulec, executive director of the Data Visualization Society (DVS), what makes these rays special is that they have taken on a life of their own; Anyone can knit, print or reproduce the pattern in creative ways, which helps connect with the message.
“It can make the data seem less technical and allows us to look at the big picture and reflect,” Makulec says.
However, Hawkins notes, the graph has also faced some backlash, primarily within the scientific community, for being too simple.
“I have certainly received criticism because you cannot see the details, the numbers. I think that’s fair,” admits the University of Reading professor.
“There is no single way to present this in a way that is easily understandable and gives everyone everything they want from a chart. It is just one resource among a wide range that we can draw on to talk to different audiences about the same topic.”
In any case, this style of communicating data became so popular that other people reinvented climate bands to help illustrate other crises facing the planet, such as “air quality bands” with shades of light blue to black or “ strips of biodiversity”, which range from green to grey.
Miles Richardson, who heads the nature connectivity research group at the University of Derby in the United Kingdom, was concerned that biodiversity loss receives less coverage than other global problems.
Richardson knew climate strips well and thought it would be effective to create a version for biodiversity since no one had done them.
“There is a battle for attention every day, especially if you live in an urban environment. But the striped format seems to break through and capture people’s attention,” he says.
Weather stripes as a decoy
Weather stripes have been worn at all types of events and by all types of people, from politicians and athletes to runway models.
The president of Chile, Gabriel Boric, used them as a mask during the final debate when he was a candidate in the 2021 elections.
They were also exhibited in public infrastructure works and in means of transport in Europe.
And they have decorated buildings in New York and even natural monuments such as the White Cliffs of Dover in England.
Two years ago, they were shown on screen at a three-day music festival in Mexico City.
Cycling 4 Climate, a foundation that has organized cycling events in six countries in Europe to raise awareness about climate change, chose the striped pattern as its uniform because of the strong message it conveys.
“I often get asked about the shirt because people like the design. That starts a conversation about it, and people are always surprised when they understand what the stripes represent,” Joost Brinkman, co-founder of Cycling 4 Climate based in the Netherlands, tells the BBC.
At the end of last year, a team of scientists, environmental activists and adventurers printed the stripes on the sailboat in which they undertook a journey of about 15,810 km from Norway to Alaska.
They crossed the northwest passage of the Arctic in order to draw attention to the speed at which the ice in the area is melting.
This once-impossible sea route between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans is becoming more accessible as Arctic sea ice disappears, accelerated by global warming.
Climate belts are not in themselves the solution to global warming, but perhaps they represent a first step in recognizing the problem.
“Climate change has been a very political challenge, and if stripes have opened doors to start those conversations, I can’t think of a better impact,” concludes Amanda Makulec.
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‘This article may contain information published by third parties, some details of this article were extracted from the following source: animalpolitico.com’
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