“Believing is seeing and seeing is believing.”

Tom Hanks

Reality check

June 20 has become a day each year to remind us why we care about climate change. This date has been designated “Warming Stripes Day”, and is an opportunity to spread awareness about our dangerous warming trend through one of the most powerful climate visuals ever created. 

Each vertical stripe in the graphic above represents the average temperature for a given year compared to the long-term average. Blue years were cooler than average; red years were hotter. The deeper the color, the greater the difference. This is the global version, but you can find them for countries, states, and even cities on Climate Central’s website.

I’ll save you the trouble of looking them all up: it’s getting hotter everywhere.

Just take it in for a minute. We’re not seeing a short-term fluctuation or statistical quirk. It’s a clear, unmistakable trend moving in one direction. The surface temperature of our planet is much like our body temperature – there is an ideal number, and veering just a few degrees too high or low spells trouble, The rising temperatures help explain why our weather is increasingly extreme. Larger temperature swings, longer heat waves, persistent droughts, and more intense rainstorms are all symptoms of what this simple image reveals. And those symptoms are already causing real suffering and financial losses for millions of people.

Here’s another way to look at the trend. Simply stunning.

The goal of Unheating is to stay cool and focus on the positives: things we can control, reasons for hope, and progress being made. But every now and then, a reality check is healthy. 

And the reality is this: things will continue to get worse until we address the root cause…too much heat-trapping pollution. It really is that simple.

What can we do?

So what do we do? We need large-scale change, but there is still plenty individuals can do. Start with one thing. There are lots of ideas on previous posts. Taking a step is empowering and feels a lot better than standing still. 

Let’s do something about climate change. Learn about it. Talk about it. Help solve it.