Global Warming Stripes

In “The Coloured Stripes That Explain Climate Change” (the BBC, 2023, https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20231206-the-coloured-stripes-that-explain-climate-change) Carla Rosch illustrates how the associations we have to colours can be used. Take a look at the warm and cool colours used to explain global warming at the link.

Rosch reports that “In 2017, Ellie Highwood, then professor of climate physics at the University of Reading, posted a photograph on Twitter of a “global warming blanket” she had crocheted, in which rows of colour represented average global temperature changes across time. She had no idea that a graphic version later created by a colleague would become a global symbol of climate change. . . . When Ed Hawkings, climate scientist . . . saw the climate stripes and witnessed people’s reactions, he thought they would be a good way to visualise the data from climate change online. He reduced the range of colours to tones of blues and reds, universally associated in weather maps with temperature.”