This is the most compelling climate change visualization we’ve ever seen
A climate scientist in the UK has devised a new way of visualizing the progression of human-caused global warming, and it is one that you've likely never considered before.
Ed Hawkins, a climate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Science at the University of Reading, devised the spiral animation to show how global average surface temperatures are increasing relative to the average temperature during preindustrial times.
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"I wanted to try and visualise the changes we have seen in different ways to learn about how we might improve our communication," Hawkins told Mashable in an email.
"The spiral appeared to present the information in an appealing and straightforward way. The pace of change is immediately obvious, especially over the past few decades," he said.
The data comes from the Hadley Center for Climate Prediction and Research, which is part of the UK Met Office.
The graphic shows monthly global temperature departures on average from January 1850 to March 2016, compared to the baseline of preindustrial temperatures from 1850 to 1900.
In his blog post, Hawkins credits another climate scientist, Jan Fuglestvedt of the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research (CICERO) in Oslo, with the idea for the visualization.
At the start of the animation, the years remain close to the center of the circle, with a clear warming trend only becoming apparent in the data in the 20th century. In recent years, the warming has been especially pronounced, as two thresholds with significance for global climate policy are approached.
Why this visualization matters
It's clear from this visualization that we're now approaching 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, above preindustrial temperatures, at least for the year 2015 and so far in 2016.
In addition, we're edging closer to the 2-degree Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, threshold as well. More warming than this signals "dangerous interference with the climate system" under a 1992 U.N. climate treaty, according to the Paris Agreement and previous agreements as well.
The reason these two marks are significant is that international agreements, including the Paris Climate Agreement that is likely to enter into force by 2017, set a goal of limiting global warming to below 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. The agreement contained language that aims to hold global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels by the end of this century.
Clearly it's going to take significant and swift action to hold warming to such levels, and numerous reports have been published showing that the emissions reductions contained in the Paris Agreement itself won't get the job done.
"The relationship between current global temperatures and the internationally discussed target limits are also clear without much complex interpretation needed," Hawkins said of the spirals.
Last year was the warmest year on record, but so far 2016 is running warmer than that benchmark. In fact, each month in 2016 has been the warmest such month on record.
If April sets a record for the warmest such month, which it is expected to do, then that would make it a full 12 months of consecutive warmest months.
Through March, this was already the longest such streak on record, based on data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
According to NASA, six straight months from 2015 into 2016 have had a temperature anomaly, compared to the 20th century average, of at least 1 degree Celsius. That had not happened in any month prior to this record warm stretch.
The cause of the record warmth in 2015 and 2016, scientists say, is a combination of a record strong El Niño event in the tropical Pacific Ocean (which is now waning) and the increasingly apparent effects of long-term human-caused global warming.
The world was already setting more and more warm temperature records without the El Niño's assistance, but what El Niño has done was speed up the rate at which stored ocean heat is released into the atmosphere.
A worldwide coral bleaching event is underway, damaging or killing ecological treasures from the Great Barrier Reef to the Florida Keys. Meanwhile, Arctic sea ice set a record for the lowest winter maximum since such data began in 1979, and the Greenland melt season started a whopping two months early.
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Andrew Freedman is Mashable's Senior Editor for Science and Special Projects. Prior to working at Mashable, Freedman was a Senior Science writer for Climate Central. He has also worked as a reporter for Congressional Quarterly and Greenwire/E&E Daily. His writing has also appeared in the Washington Post, online at The Weather Channel, and washingtonpost.com, where he wrote a weekly climate science column for the "Capital Weather Gang" blog. He has provided commentary on climate science and policy for Sky News, CBC Radio, NPR, Al Jazeera, Sirius XM Radio, PBS NewsHour, and other national and international outlets. He holds a Masters in Climate and Society from Columbia University, and a Masters in Law and Diplomacy from The Fletcher School at Tufts University.
