Northwest Passage Marine Science Expedition/Ramon Goncleves
These color stripes represent the world’s average annual temperature since 1850 (Credit: Northwest Passage Ocean Science Expedition/Ramon Gonclaves)
Scientists have added new shades to the graphical representation of global temperature changes in response to global warming. They are now applying this idea to explain other environmental problems.
Their journey took 115 days at sea and covered 15,810 km (9,823 miles) between Norway and Homer, Alaska. Along the way, the crew aboard the hand-built expedition yacht Abel Tasman passed through the rugged coastlines of Iceland, Greenland, and Canada, and through the Bering Strait to reach their final destination.
This sea lane between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, known as the Northwest Passage, was once impossible to cross, but is becoming easier to access as global warming causes Arctic sea ice to disappear.
“It’s wild. It’s different. You don’t know what to expect,” says Abel Tasman owner, environmental activist and expedition leader Keith Tuffley. He had always wanted to cross the Northwest Passage, so he left behind a career in investment banking to embark on this adventure.
“We wanted to use this expedition to inform and further explore the Arctic’s vulnerability to climate change,” Tuffley said. “We need to get the message across that this is destabilizing the entire planet. It’s kind of out of sight and out of mind because there aren’t many people living there. That’s absolutely wrong. Masu.”
In January 2024, before leaving on his trip, he realized that one of his sails, the gennaker (the big downwind sail), was falling apart and needed to be replaced. In a moment of inspiration, he had an idea.
“Climate stripes have always influenced me. It’s a very powerful image,” he says. “It suddenly occurred to me that we should put them on the gennaker.”
Northwest Passage Marine Science Expedition
Keith Tuffley (right) wanted a visual message for the Abel Tasman’s journey through the Arctic Northwest Passage (Credit: Northwest Passage Marine Science Expedition)
The “climate stripe,” also known as the “warming stripe,” is a graphical representation of the change in Earth’s temperature over time since 1850, displayed as vertical bars of color. This pattern typically changes from blue to redder shades, showing how the Earth has warmed as humans pump more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
It wasn’t easy, but Tuffley managed to get a custom-made sail with climate change stripes printed on it.
“It was a lot of fun to sail,” he says. “There’s no other sail like it. It’s beautiful and has a great statement. We wanted people to wonder about the story behind it. That’s what makes climate stripes so powerful. I think you can create an image that attracts people.
One of Tuffley’s most memorable days was traveling to Disko Bay in western Greenland, where Greenland’s largest glacier meets the sea. Greenland’s ice sheet is melting, with the rate of ice loss increasing sixfold since the 1980s. The melting of both glaciers and sea ice contributes to the entry of vast quantities of freshwater into the oceans, with global impacts.
“As we were crossing that bay, it happened to be the hottest day ever,” he says. “We found ourselves seeing and hearing the planet melting. It was really beautiful to see all these icebergs melting, but it was also sad. ”
Both the climate and the stripes of biodiversity show signs of a broken relationship with nature – Miles Richardson
That day, July 22, 2024, was the hottest day on record, according to an analysis of global daily temperature data by NASA.
If that happens, the 2024 stripes will be the deepest red on the latest scale, Hawkins said.
“We are warming the planet through our own actions, which is making these types of phenomena more severe and common, causing economic damage, death and misery for millions of people. ” said Ed Hawkins, a professor of climate science at the university. The University of Reading created the climate stripe graphic. “And until we do something to stop global warming, things will only get worse.”
Climate stripes are also being reconsidered to account for other crises facing the planet. Not everyone has a negative story.
Air Quality Stripes for major cities around the world show outdoor concentrations of particulate matter (PM2.5) air pollution from 1850 to 2021, based on satellite data and climate models. In some major cities, the stripes show how air quality has actually improved due to the effectiveness of air pollution control measures. However, there are still many areas where the air quality is deteriorating.
air quality stripes.info
Air quality has improved in some cities around the world as anti-pollution measures pay off (Credit: Airqualitytripes.info)
Kirsty Pringle, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Edinburgh in the UK and project manager for Air Quality Stripes, which launched in August 2024, said: “We were really inspired by Climate Stripes because Climate Stripes It’s a very effective tool to get your message across.” After testing different styles and asking for feedback, we decided on a version that uses colored stripes, but with additional layers of information such as a legend with air quality ratings (ranging from “very good” to “very poor”). has been added. Focus lines and possibly historical context annotations.
“The overall response has been very positive,” Pringle said. “If we had just created a series of line graphs without something visually impressive and informative, I don’t think we would have gotten as much interest.”
Pringle believes that many people are now familiar with climate stripes and that it can help people outside the academic community quickly understand the message they convey. But they also illustrate the subtleties of the challenges facing many sectors.
“Climate stripes have a very simple, global message that the planet is getting warmer, while atmospheric stripes have cleaner air in some cities and more pollution. “It’s a more mixed message, in that some cities have more people than others,” she said. Say. “So there are two different stories depending on where you are.”
air quality stripes.info
Air quality stripes represent the changes that rapidly developing cities such as Beijing, China have undergone (Credit: Airqualitytripes.info)
Another notable difference when it comes to air quality is that we already have many solutions and are easier to address than climate change, Pringle says.
“This is a really solvable problem,” she says. “It is clear that there is a very urgent need to address climate change, but the advantage when it comes to air pollution is that the effects of action can be seen relatively quickly.”
Another variation is the “biodiversity stripe.” It uses colored bars in a similar way to indicate biodiversity loss, changing from predominantly green to gray over time.
Miles Richardson, head of the Nature Connectivity Research Group at the University of Derby in the UK, was troubled by the lack of attention given to biodiversity loss compared to other global issues. Richardson knew a lot about climate stripes, and since no one had done it before, he thought it would be good to create a biodiversity version.
biodiversitytripes.info/LPI 2024
Green, yellow and gray bars help tell how biodiversity has changed between 1970 and 2020 (Credit: biodiversitytripes.info/LPI 2024)
“There’s a battle for attention every day, especially if you live in an urban environment. But the striped format is innovative and seems to be capturing people’s attention,” he says. Masu.
He found biodiversity data, spoke to ecologists, consulted other experts, and published them in 2022. He wanted the stripes to represent data and help convey a message to people about the decline in biodiversity around the world.
“They became very popular. They went worldwide within three months. I think that speaks to the power of the striped format. People understand that,” Richardson said. I say. “I think both the climate and the stripes of biodiversity are showing signs of a broken relationship with nature. That’s the root cause, and we need to change that.”
For Tuffley, that change is possible, but it requires a mindset shift that sees problems as opportunities.
“We face a battle with this problem, but by addressing these challenges we can create significant economic and social change,” he says. “When we are inspired, we can create positive energy and solve problems. But each of us has a role to play.”
Meanwhile, the Abel Tasman yacht is out at sea for the winter, but Ms Tuffley plans to unfurl her climate-striped sails again next year to continue spreading her message.
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