By Becky Keim, former staff member
While an extensive amount of climate change data exists, it's not always readily digestible. Sometimes it takes a great visual representation of scientific results to get the full sense of what is going on with global temperatures.
To this end, Ed Hawkins, a widely-published professor of climate science at the University of Reading in the UK, recently created this visual model of climate change, showing spiraling global temperatures from 1850 to 2016 in full animation. The result is fascinating!
The spiral graphic includes global temperature markers of 0.0, 1.5, and 2 degrees Celsius. The 1.5 and 2 degree C markers have become even more important, as the world pledged to attempt to avoid reaching these global temperatures in the Paris climate agreement signed earlier this year.
While it may be difficult to translate all of the data that exists on climate change, Hawkins' animated spiral graph does a great job of making global warming visible, and demonstrating the historical rise in global temperatures as they grow dangerously close to the 1.5 degree C marker.
