Show Your Stripes Day: How a colorful graphic raises awareness of climate change
"Warming Stripes" show how temperature has changed for more than a century.
How a colorful graphic indicates a global warming trend
Bernadette Woods-Placky, Climate Central Meteorologist, on the importance behind Show Your Stripes Day.
The first day of summer is also Show Your Stripes Day.
The observance was created six years ago to raise awareness of climate change. At the center of the effort is a colorful graphic called "Warming Stripes."
According to Climate Central, a nonprofit independent group of scientists and communicators, the concept was created by climate scientist Ed Hawkins. It features lines of various shades of blue and red that are stacked left to right, indicating how temperature has changed for a given location over a certain amount of time. Blue represents a cooler-than-average year, while red represents a warmer-than-average one. Darker colors represent a bigger departure from the average.
In the example below, the stripes represent the global temperature change from 1850 on the left to 2022 on the right. The bulk of the world’s warmest years in the past 172 years have happened in the past few decades.
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Global temperature change from 1850 to 2022.
(Climate Central / FOX Weather)
How to create a ‘Warming Stripes’ graphic for where you live
Climate Central has created "Warming Stripes" graphics for 178 cities, 49 states, the U.S. and the globe that include available data up to 2022.
To find the graphic for your city, click here and select your location from the drop-down menu. Here’s an example for Houston.
Temperature change in Houston from 1892 to 2022.
(Climate Central / FOX Weather)
To find the graphic for your state, click here and select your state from the drop-down menu. Here’s an example for Texas.
Temperature change in Texas from 1895 to 2022.
(Climate Central / FOX Weather)
You can also go to showyourstripes.info and find graphics down to state level for the U.S.