Do you really know? What are warming stripes?
Mar 18, 2026
A quick look at the origin and design of warming stripes and how a simple colour barcode encodes yearly temperature changes. Discussion of the creator and why the graphic went viral worldwide. Notes on public uptake, derivative uses, and risks like oversimplification and potential greenwashing. A clear call to urgency about rising temperatures.
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How Warming Stripes Encode Temperature History
- Warming stripes visualize year-by-year temperature change from 1850 to now using blue for cooler and red for hotter years.
- Each stripe compares that year's average to the full-period average, making recent rapid warming obvious as darkening reds.
Designing A Universal Climate Visual
- Ed Hawkins created the graphic to be language-free so anyone worldwide can grasp warming trends instantly.
- The visual simplicity helped the site show stripes by continent, country or city and drove millions of downloads.
Hawkins' Stark Warning About Future Colours
- Ed Hawkins said colours will keep getting darker until warming stops, linking stripe intensity to policy choices.
- He explicitly tied future colour darkness to decisions at COP26 and beyond.
