What is 'Show Your Stripes' day? Colorful graphic inspires climate change conversations
BOSTON - Wednesday is the sixth annual Show Your Stripes Day, a day dedicated to raising climate change awareness.
The idea started when a UK meteorologist named Ed Hawkins created a simple striped design. The picture is easy to read-- each stripe represents a year in global temperature averages. Where it's blue, that's blue average. Where it's red, it's above average.
"It's interesting, the design itself is intriguing but what it represents isn't necessarily good," said Bernadette Woods, chief meteorologist for Princeton, New Jersey-based Climate Central.
Woods said we, as a country and world, are making huge advancements in slowing the rate of warming, but "it's just not fast enough. Warming is happening faster than our solutions can overtake the warming. What we need to do is really accelerate those solutions."
She points to solutions like green energy, continued investment in electric vehicles, and smarter food choices.
"We were on a path of warming of 8° or 9° C by the end of the century. That has come down. It has not come down enough. We are already seeing impacts at our current rate of warming," added Woods.
You don't have to look far to see how our changing climate is impacting us locally. Events like the recent wildfires in Canada and the resulting poor air quality for the Northeast, or our worsening allergy season, or the increase of "sunny day flooding" at our coasts all have the fingerprint of climate change.
"There is a lot of ways this is playing out, and just 1° Celsius is doing that," Woods said.
Globally, the Earth has warmed about 1.2° C over the last 140 years or so.
In fact, 10 of the hottest years on record globally have occurred in the last 12 years.
"People know something is happening. They don't always understand what is happening with climate change. How that's effecting them personally and what they can do about it," added Woods.
Climate Central enourages people to make the stripes your own -- to go big and be creative! Come up with your own ideas how to inspire more climate conversations.
And if you're out and about Wednesday evening in Boston, you may notice some area landmarks lit up with the stripes. The Zakim, the Longfellow, the Fore River, and the Burns Bridges will all be lit up.