UK cities warming up fast, new climate stripes reveal

Cities across the UK reported their warmest year on record in 2022 as temperatures continue to rise rapidly, striking new graphics show.

This data has been visualised in the latest versions of the climate stripes graphics, which have been released today (Friday, 21 April). The stripes show the change in temperature in the UK from the past 100+ years. Shades of blue indicate cooler-than-average years, while red shows years that were hotter than average.

A new dark red bar has been added to the United Kingdom’s climate stripes graphic after it experienced its warmest year on record in 2022. Graphics for individual cities have been made available for the first time ahead of Earth Day 2023 (Saturday, 22 April). Previously, stripes were only available for the UK’s four nations and Berkshire, Durham, Oxford and Jersey. Now, graphics for 13 cities (Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Coventry, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Hull, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, London, Manchester, and Sheffield) have been released.

Like with the UK’s updated climate stripes graphic, the visualisations for all 13 cities show they experienced their warmest years on record.

Stripes creator Professor Ed Hawkins, climate scientist at the University of Reading and National Centre for Atmospheric Science, said: “We wanted to create these very localised stripes to give people an indication of how things are changing right where they live. We know that different parts of the UK have different landscapes, different key industries, and different population sizes – and all of this can have an impact both on emissions, and average temperatures.

“Our key observation is that regardless of all these factors, the trend remains the same – most of the more recent years have been a lot warmer than most of the years a century ago.

“After the dangerous heatwaves we experienced last summer, I hope this new city data will serve as a reminder of the very-real impact rising temperatures are having on our lives and inspire people up and down the country to play their part in helping our communities avoid the worst possible impacts of climate change.”

New graphics for every country around the world have also been unveiled and now include data from before 1900 via the the Berkeley Earth project.

Show Your Stripes

Stripes are available to view and download for cities, countries, continents and the globe at the showyourstripes.info website.

Using data from the Met Office, the University of Reading has also partnered up with UK charity Carbon Copy to produce stripes for individual UK counties. These stripes can be downloaded from the Carbon Copy website, where detailed information about emissions and local climate action plans is also available.

Ric Casale, Carbon Copy co-founder, said: “We know that the effects of climate change, bigger storms, longer summer droughts, and more flooding – are happening right now, right here. Climate change is no longer an abstract issue for someone else to deal with, it’s something that people in the UK can see and feel locally, where they live.”

Stripes for biodiversity

The University of Derby has this week launched its #BiodiversityStripes - a similar visualisation that shows the global change in biodiversity from 1970 to 2019. The highest level of biodiversity is coloured bright green. Lower levels move from yellow to grey, depending upon the level of decline. Darker greys appear with greater declines.

Inspired by the University of Reading’s climate stripes, Biodiversity Stripes creator Professor Miles Richardson used the same graphic format to show how species have declined rapidly over the past five decades.

The global data, which includes more than 5000 species, shows the population of mammals, birds, fish, amphibians and reptiles has seen an average drop of 69% globally since 1970.

Professor Miles Richardson, Professor of Human Factors and Nature Connectedness at the University of Derby, said: “Only by addressing both the warming climate and loss of wildlife do we stand a chance of passing on a stable planet for future generations, yet biodiversity loss has had far less coverage.

“The ‘biodiversity stripes’ provide a simple representation of the change in biodiversity over time, they show how our green world is becoming grey and this is something everyone needs to engage with.”