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The Female Gaze

The Images That Make Us: Warming Stripes

In our newest column The Images That Make Us, writer, founder and CEO of MTArt Agency, Marine Tanguy, selects a painting, sculpture, or a photograph and responds to its creative and cultural moment and importance in how it shapes us as individuals. Next up, Warming Stripes….

You have probably seen these stripes on Instagram or printed on mugs. These stripes have been called the Warming Stripes and quickly became the global symbol of the current climate change crisis. As climate change denial is more and more studied by many universities and sometimes make for a convincing electoral argument (note the subtile hint to Donald Trump), how did this small image trigger more impact than a political conference?

At first glance, this looks like a random bar code or a logo. Instead, each colour shows the average temperature on our globe since 1860. Blue was chosen to represent the colder years, red the warmest. There are eight tints of red and blue and between each, a gap of 0.1 degrees Celsius. The darkest red therefore represents an increase of 0.8 degrees Celsius. This image was created by researcher Ed Hawkins and first appeared in 2015, a year that will be remembered by its deadliest fires and droughts, like the one in Pakistan which killed upwards of 1200 people.

Hawkins used the tool ColorBrewer which suggests a series of colours that are visible to all, even if you are colour blind. The acceleration of these temperatures for the last two decades is very visible on the left hand side of this image. It pushes us to question, stop and think. The image went viral straight away and was made available to download for free from this site. With millions of views on TikTok and over 1 million of single downloads from the site, it reached an audience that wasn’t used to accessing climate change research and findings, once again proving the power of images over words. Each 0.1 degrees Celsius added to our current global world temperature has disastrous consequences and this image is a stark reminder of it. The genius of Hawkins is to have made a complex explanation become a simple, powerful image.

This symbol has since been spotted on the cover of the book of Greta Thunberg, on the T-shirts of European Green Parties and even on the Reading Football Club in home kit. Unfortunately, it has also been seen in fashion shows and used for green washing purposes.

Overall, this image is a lesson on the power of visual codes, as we all share and understand the visual language, it transcends countries, political parties and individualism.


Lead image credit: © Ed Hawkins, National Centre for Atmospheric Science, UoR.

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