When astronomical summer begins on Wednesday, a recurring image will pop up across the country and around the world. With a pattern similar to a barcode, these stripes were created by Ed Hawkins, a climate scientist at the University of Reading in England. Originally, each stripe depicted the global average temperature each year since 1850 using data from the U.K. Meteorological Office. With few exceptions, the stripes show the gradual transition from blue to red, illustrating the dramatic warming over the past few decades. The last seven years haven been the seven warmest in the 174-year global record.

Source: Daily Sun June 18, 2023 05:37 UTC