Temperatures were so high in 2023 that a new colour could be needed to show it on the climate stripes image.

The series of vertical coloured bars offers a visual representation of how our planet is progressively heating up.

It was created by climate scientist Professor Ed Hawkins at the University of Reading, UK, in 2018.

Running from blue to a deep red, the striking image hammers home the extreme warming driven by human-caused emissions in recent years.

With global temperatures soaring to the highest level ever recorded last year, a line of the darkest red has been added to the scale. 

But Professor Hawkins says that following official confirmation of 2023’s temperatures a new colour might be needed to represent the rise.

What do the climate stripes mean?

The chart runs from 1850 – when temperature records began – to 2023. It draws on billions of pieces of scientific data on our climate.

Each stripe signifies the average temperature for a single year, relative to the average temperature over the 1971-2000 period.

“The colours used in the climate stripes are based on a scale designed to show which years are warmer and cooler than the average,” explains Professor Hawkins.

Blue shades indicate cooler-than-average years whereas red represents hotter than average years.

The scale grows rapidly red towards the right hand side of the image, showing a spike in global warming in recent decades.

‘2023 was off the end of the scale’

This week, the UK’s Met Office confirmed 2023 as the hottest year on record for Wales and Northern Ireland and the second warmest on record for the UK overall, just behind 2022.

Europe’s Climate Change Service Copernicus already indicated in December that 2023 would be the hottest recorded year in human history. Some official records, when released, are expected to show that 2023 was more than 1.5C above pre-industrial records.

“2023 was off the end of the scale,” says Professor Hawkins.

“This was always going to happen at some point, given the continued increase in global greenhouse gases… But the margin of record breaking in 2023 has still been a surprise,” he adds.

But this is a time for action, not despair.

“2024 has to be the year we turn conversations into faster action,” urges Professor Hawkins.

“The good news is that we already have many of the solutions we need,” he adds. “We now need bold, transformative change across all parts of society to make our planet’s climate safer for current and future generations.”

You can view stripes for more than 200 countries, cities, regions, and the oceans at showyourstripes.info.