Warming stripes have been used as a method of communicating climatic temperature changes since 2018. They are simple, easy to understand, and don’t need a scientific background to interpret. Each ‘stripe’ represents the mean, near-surface temperature for an entire year, with blue colours representing cooler years and red colours, warmer years. More than a billion individual thermometer measurements are condensed into such charts.
This chart shows temperature changes in Stoke-on-Trent since 1850. You can check out your own area at showyourstripes.info.
The chart clearly shows how the climate is rapidly warming, particularly in recent years, with the last 11 years being the warmest 11 years on record.
Using reconstructed (tree rings and other proxies) and observed data spanning more than 2,000 years, evidence that these temperature changes are related to human activity are clearly shown when comparing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels to global temperatures. The start of industrialisation is a notable turning point.
What lies beneath and above?
Historically warming stripes have been based on surface temperatures across the planet, and this is where we most immediately feel the impacts of climate change on our daily lives. But we know that changes in the atmosphere, for example to the jet stream, can impact our climate, and that changes to ocean circulations could trigger a climate tipping point, so is there evidence that global climate warming is already impacting the atmosphere and the oceans?
Recent research (2025) looked at precisely this question. Using satellite data to look at atmospheric warming, and ship-based and float data to study ocean temperatures, the following chart summarises the results using the warming stripes approach.
For oceans, the pattern is similar to warming stripes for surface temperatures, with the warmest years predominately occurring over the last decade. The timing of the warming suggests heat is moving downward, from the ocean surface, consistent with human influence and as predicted by climate scientists.
For the lower atmosphere, the troposphere, where typical commercial airlines operate, warming stripes again show a very similar pattern to surface temperatures, with the warmest years predominately in the last decade.
On the other hand, a very different pattern of warming stripes is seen for the higher atmosphere, the stratosphere (above typical airline cruising height), with the coolest years being over the last decade and warmest around 1980. This may seem strange but is actually a clear indication of human activities directly changing our climate and was first predicted by scientists in the 1960s.
Increasing levels of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide make the atmosphere more efficient at absorbing and releasing heat. In the lower atmosphere greenhouse gases act like a blanket to retain more heat and warm the earth’s surface. In the thin air of the upper atmosphere, not much heat arrives from below. But additional carbon dioxide means the upper atmosphere is able to release more heat to space than it gains from the lower atmosphere, so the upper atmosphere cools.
This pattern, of heating in the lower atmosphere and cooling in the higher atmosphere, would not happen if, for example, global warming was being caused by changes in the sun’s brightness, as that would lead to warming throughout the atmosphere. The observed pattern is therefore a clear indicator of human impact on the climate through pumping vast quantities of greenhouse gases into the environment.
2,000+ years of climate change
Superimposing warming stripes to carbon dioxide data over the last 2,025 years produces an image both stark and troubling. This chart is an urgent call for action – we must stop pumping carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
Even if you don’t believe the evidence presented here, 99.9% of climate scientists have concluded human-caused climate change is happening. To pretend otherwise, to delay urgent actions, to spread misinformation about climate change, is incredibly dangerous and, quite honestly, should be criminal. It damages the planet, the environment, our children and future generations.
The next 65 years – a 3C world?
Globally 2024 was the warmest year on record and the first to be more than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. Temperatures in 2025 dipped slightly making it the second hottest on record, tying with 2023, although it was the warmest on record for ocean heat content; 93% of extra heat in the atmosphere caused by human-emitted greenhouse gases goes into the oceans, the rest warms the earth’s surface.
To all practical purposes any hope of keeping global warming below the critical 1.5C threshold set at the Paris COP in 2015 is long gone. So what does the future hold? Probably the best we can hope for is if we take rapid and radical action now to achieve net-zero. This would hopefully stabilise the planet at a new 2C warmer norm, assuming we don’t hit any climate tipping points.
A 0.5C increase from the 1.5C goal sounds small, but it actually represents a massive jump in risk for human and natural systems. Heat waves would become the new normal, floods and droughts would increase, more animal and plant species would be wiped out, storms would be turbocharged, crop yields would be reduced, and health threats would proliferate.
A 3C warmer planet takes us into a truly dangerous, unknowable world ̶ it would be too far outside the entire experience of human history accurately to predict. However it is almost certain that we would see “weather chaos with deadly heat waves, devastating monster storms, and persistent widespread droughts that could trigger worldwide hunger crises. Rising sea levels that devastate our coasts. Collapsing ecosystems, devastating species extinctions, burning and withering forests, acidified oceans. Failed states, huge numbers of people on the run.”
Time is critical, but it’s never too late
Stoke-on-Trent, like every other city, is warming rapidly. It, and the rest of the planet, are warming faster than at any other time in recorded history – at least 10,000 years. Even when the earth has emerged from previous ice ages, or has been warmer (55 million years ago!), those changes in carbon dioxide levels and temperatures have never been as rapid as they are today. But it’s not just our cities or regions, it’s the atmosphere above us, and it’s the deep oceans that are showing the unmistakable finger prints of human generated climate change.
While much damage has already been done to our planet, damage that cannot be reversed for thousands of years, even if we stopped all greenhouse gas production now, we can prevent an even more disastrous future by taking urgent action, now, with the aim of achieving net-zero by 2050.
Make no mistake, the difference between a 1.5C rise and a 2.0C rise in global temperatures is not small; it’s massive, and to delay action to prevent this from happening would be an act of monumental self-harm for our species.
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