The history of climate stripes, born to cover a child

In Reading, Berkshire, June can be considered a “cool” month. the average temperature, in this part of England, at the beginning of summer foresees a maximum of 20° and a minimum of 10°. It is a city where small children, in the evening, they need a blanket. Because of this Ellie Highwoodin June of 2017, thought a colorful cover was a perfect gift for a couple of ex-coworkers who just became parents.

Ellie Highwood, at the time, was teaching Atmospheric physics at the University of Reading. And in his spare time he cultivated his greatest passion: crocheting.

Looking for inspiration for the gift she had in mind, Professor Highwood thought back to the “temperature blankets” that he had seen on the web. Each row of stitches of these blankets had un different color that represented the variations of temperatures in a particular location, usually over the course of a year.

Yes, this could have been a good idea. “Then I wondered what a blanket that showed the change in global temperature would look like,” said Professor Highwood on her blog. “Global warming, after all, is often explained with the metaphor of greenhouse gases acting like a blanket.” , and by doing so they trap infrared radiation and keep the Earth warm. So it seemed like an interesting connection. I had also done several rainbow-themed covers in the past and still had a lot of thread to use.”

If there is one thing that man has done very well in the past – besides influencing them – it is to record temperatures observed on Earth.

On the website of NOOA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) Ellie Highwood immediately found what she was looking for: a graph with global temperature anomalies (land surface and ocean surface) from 1880 to 2016. As she later explained on her blog, the professor has converted the NOOA data to a scale of 15 different colors which would represent the anomalous temperatures on its cover. Shades of blue would indicate lower than normal temperatures, yellow and red temperatures higher than normal.

Professor Highwood’s cover didn’t go unnoticed. One of her colleagues, the climate scientist Ed Hawkinshe offered to turn his crochet work into a graphical representation that it was “more user friendly“.

That’s how they were born “weather stripes”one of the world’s most famous symbols of global warming. A sort of “barcode” that testifies climate change that has occurred in recent decades.

Ellie Highwood put them together – not knowing that another scientist, Joan E. Sheldonhad done a similar job in 2015 – ed Ed Hawkins made them a universal symbol.

“I wanted to arouse the curiosity of those who are not interested in the climate crisis – Hawkins said last April to Green&Blue, the Gedi hub which is dedicating the 2023 edition of its Festival to the battle for the climate. “It is difficult to reach a large share of people who could do a lot, both with their behavior and by putting pressure on politicians – he added – So, in 2019, I thought of a symbol that was as simple as possible, which could give correct information, but also understandable to those who know minimum science”.

Since then, every June 21st, everyone shows their stripes during what has become “#ShowYourStripeDay.” The stripes appear on the facades of buildings and on the social profiles of many users.

So many blankets, in short, envelop the world every year. Not to warm it up, in this case. But to protect it.