Climate scientist forced to add new colours to iconic climate stripes

By Anders Lorenzen 

At the back of record-breaking temperatures in 2023, the now iconic climate stripes created by Prof Ed Hawkins, from the University of Reading, will need a new colour added to accurately represent the warming that has occurred, the scientist have said. 

The stripes show the change in average annual global temperatures since 1850, with red indicating hotter years and blue cooler ones against the average of the period 1971-2000.

Prof Hawkins has published the first updated image for the globe using the latest interim data for 2023 and said the darkest red from the current scale will not tell the full story.

Off the scale 

The climate scientist remarked: “2023 was off the end of the scale.”

Last week, the primary UK weather forecaster, the Met Office confirmed 2023 as the hottest year on record for Wales and Northern Ireland and the second warmest for the UK as a whole, just behind 2022.

Prof Hawkins acknowledged there was always going to be an update on the colours at one point, but that he had not expected to happen already now: “It was always going to happen at some point. But the margin of record-breaking in 2023 has still been a surprise,” he said.

The stripes represent billions of pieces of scientific data, collected over more than a century, in a single image.

Prof Hawkins’ visualisations have had a remarkable impact as they have been seen on Envision Racing’s new Formula E racecar over the past year, on the White Cliffs of Dover and on Toronto’s CN Tower. In 2022, the stripes were displayed on a local bus and incorporated into Reading FC’s new home kit.

“The climate stripes are all about starting conversations about climate change, and 2024 has to be the year we turn conversations into faster action,” Prof Hawkins concluded.