Displayed by @ENTERSHIKARI during Reading Festival to thousands of music fans. The lead singer @RouReynolds discusses what they mean and why they are important during the performance, stimulating new conversations. (2/n)
Made into dress form by @huprice, and worn when visiting policymakers to discuss climate change. (3/n)
Adapted by @NetZeroMN when deciding on a wrap for his @Tesla, and taking this design to car meets to discuss the importance of why the move to electric cars is happening. (4/n)
Today is #ShowYourStripes day, when people around the world share how the climate is changing where they live. These graphics start conversations about our changing climate and what we can do about it.
Two years ago there were 65,000 sheets of paper containing hand-written measurements of rainfall taken all across the UK & Ireland before 1960. Virtually all of the 5.28 million observations on these sheets were unavailable to climate scientists as they had never been digitised.
Thanks to @metoffice archives, these sheets were scanned & made openly available, but how could the observations be extracted?
The 15,607 volunteers will today finish transcribing the last of the 65,000 sheets of 10-year monthly rainfall amounts for the UK, spanning 1677 to 1960.
Truly amazing to see 5+ million measurements rescued from paper to digital in such a short time.
Earth's climate has changed before for reasons nothing to do with human activity. Changes in the position of the continents, the sun's output, the number of volcanic eruptions, and the Earth's orbit have all influenced our planet's climate. Climate scientists study these reasons.
We know that none of those reasons can explain the warming measured since 1850. We also know that an increase in levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere will warm the planet, just as we've observed. It is our emissions of CO₂ that dominates recent warming trends.
Since the 1830s scientists have known that the Earth's climate changes without any human influence, e.g. ice ages. Variations in the Earth's orbit, the location of the continents, the energy given off by the sun & the magnitude of volcanic eruptions can all affect the climate.
Before widespread use of thermometers in the mid-1800s the effects of a changing climate are seen in tree rings, ice cores, corals & other 'natural archives'. The 'little ice age' is the most recent period where natural factors changed the climate by a small but detectable amount