Warming stripes

Warming stripes (sometimes referred to as climate stripes, climate timelines or stripe graphics) are data visualization graphics that use a series of coloured stripes chronologically ordered to visually portray long-term temperature trends. Warming stripes reflect a "minimalist" style, conceived to use colour alone to avoid technical distractions to intuitively convey global warming trends to non-scientists. British climatologist Ed Hawkins originated the concept of visualizing historical temperature data in 2018. The data visualization technique was soon extended to involve animation, and to visualize diverse quantities such as sea level rise predictive climate data, progression of ocean depths, aviation's greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity loss, soil moisture changes and fine particulate matter concentrations. The graphic has been used to visually juxtapose temperature trends with other data—such as atmospheric CO2 concentration, global glacier retreat, and precipitation. In less technical contexts, the graphic has been embraced by climate activists, used as cover images of books and magazines, used in fashion design, and projected onto natural landmarks. It has been used on athletic team uniforms, music festival stages, and public infrastructure.

Background, publication and content

In May 2016, to make visualizing climate change easier for the general public, University of Reading climate scientist Ed Hawkins created an animated spiral graphic of global temperature change as a function of time, a representation said to have gone viral. Jason Samenow wrote in The Washington Post that the spiral graph was "the most compelling global warming visualization ever made", before it was featured in the opening ceremony of the 2016 Summer Olympics. Separately, by 10 June 2017, Ellie Highwood, also a climate scientist at the University of Reading, had completed a crocheted "global warming blanket" that was inspired by "temperature blankets" representing temperature trends in respective localities. Hawkins provided Highwood with a more user friendly colour scale to avoid the muted colour differences present in Highwood's blanket. Independently, in November 2015, University of Georgia estuarine scientist Joan Sheldon made a "globally warm scarf" having 400 blue, red and purple rows, but could not contact Hawkins until 2022. Both Highwood and Sheldon credit as their original inspirations, "sky blankets" and "sky scarves" which are based on daily sky colours. On 22 May 2018, Hawkins published graphics constituting a chronologically ordered series of blue and red vertical stripes that he called warming stripes. Hawkins, a lead author for the IPCC 6th Assessment Report, received the Royal Society's 2018 Kavli Medal, in part "for actively communicating climate science and its various implications with broad audiences". As described in a BBC article, in the month the big meteorological agencies release their annual climate assessments, Hawkins experimented with different ways of rendering the global data and "chanced upon the coloured stripes idea". When he tried out a banner at the Hay Festival, according to the article, Hawkins "knew he'd struck a chord". The National Centre for Atmospheric Science (UK), with which Hawkins is affiliated, states that the stripes "paint a picture of our changing climate in a compelling way. Hawkins swapped out numerical data points for colours which we intuitively react to". Others have called Hawkins's warming stripes "climate stripes" or "climate timelines". Warming stripe graphics are reminiscent of colour field painting, a style prominent in the mid 20th century, which strips out all distractions and uses only colour to convey meaning. A warming stripes graphic in a 2025 Museum of Modern Art exhibit has been compared to a painting by Morris Louis–one of the earliest proponents of the colour field monument. Colour field pioneer Barnett Newman said he was "creating images whose reality is self-evident", an ethos that Hawkins is said to have applied to the problem of climate change. Collaborating with Berkeley Earth scientist Robert Rohde, on 17 June 2019 Hawkins published for public use, a large set of warming stripes on ShowYourStripes.info. Individualized warming stripe graphics were published for the globe, for most countries, as well as for certain smaller regions such as states in the US or parts of the UK, since different parts of the world are warming more quickly than others.

Data sources and data visualization

Warming stripe graphics are defined with various parameters, including:

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