It seems that the news is always talking about global warming. Yesterday it was announced that the Doomsday clock was still stuck on three minutes to midnight due to the threat of global warming (and nuclear war obviously) and the horrendous floods and storms around the world have been attributed to the increasingly obvious threat of the phenomena. Yet, some people still don’t quite believe it’s a thing. This is when NASA steps in with a video that will blow your mind and prove once and for all that global warming really is a genuine threat to our planet.
The video is a thirty second animation that maps the global warming trends between 1880 and 2015 and shows the changing temperatures over the last 100 years using a rolling five-year average. The blue colours represent temperatures cooler than average, while the orange represent temperatures warmer than average. While the earth is predominately blue for the first half of the video, more orange starts to appear in the mid-1930’s. Last year? Well, you can see for yourself below. This comes after reports that 15 of the 16 warmest years on record have occurred since 2001, with 2015 being the warmest. The planet’s average temperature has risen about 1.0 degree Celsius since the late-19th century, a change largely blamed on an increase in carbon dioxide and other human-made emissions being released into the atmosphere.
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said “Climate change is the challenge of our generation, and NASA’s vital work on this important issue affects every person on Earth…Today’s announcement [that 2015 was the warmest on record] not only underscores how critical NASA’s Earth observation programme is, it is a key data point that should make policy makers stand up and take notice- now it’s the time to act on climate’. You can watch the video below.
Holly Martin
holly@brightonjournal.co.uk
