[{"name":"kirchner-warming-stripes-1","title":"Warming stripes \u2014 visualisations of annual temperature series from the Nordic countries","summary":"Ongoing climate change is a complex problem and communicating it to a general audience often requires short and simple explanations. Warming stripes refer to figures that resemble the black-and-white barcodes which uniquely identify almost every product we buy when it is scanned at the cashier check-out.\r\n\r\n\r\nWarming stripes can be seen as a barcode describing changes in mean annual air temperature at a specific place over a long period of time. For each year where measurements are available, a stripe is drawn \u2014 in shades of blue if the year was cold, in shades of red if the year was warm.\u00a0Warming stripes are to be read from left to right \u2014 the leftmost stripe denoting the first year\u00a0of measured temperature, the rightmost stripe denoting the year before present. When blue colors dominate the leftmost part of the Warming stripes, and red colors do so in their rightmost part, the Warmings stripes visualize the ongoing warming \u2014 one of the changing climates' main indicator, in the instant the observer is looking at them.","citations":"","comments":"This kind of data presentation is inspired by a larger set of visualisations of climate records in the online Climate Lab Book by Prof. Ed Hawkins, National Centre for Atmospheric Science at the University of Reading.\r\n\r\n\r\nThe warming stripes presented here are derived from instrumental records of annual mean air temperature data for Sweden (1860\u20132018), Stockholm (1756\u20132018), Uppsala (1722\u20132018), and Longyearbyen, Svalbard (1898\u20132018). They are based on data from the following sources:\r\n\r\n\r\nSweden: SMHI. This data series is a composite of 35 stations from Sweden having homogenized temperature records.\r\n\r\n\r\nStockholm: Stockholm Historical Weather Observations \u2013 Monthly mean air temperatures since 1756. The version of the Stockholm temperature series used here is adjusted for the urban heat island effect. The data series is discussed in: Moberg A, Bergstr\u00f6m H, Ruiz Krigsman J, Svanered O. (2002): Daily air temperature and pressure series for Stockholm (1756\u20131998). Climatic Change, 53, 171\u2013212, doi:10.1023\/A:1014966724670.\r\n\r\n\r\nUppsala: SMHI. The version of the Uppsala temperature series use here is adjusted for the urban heat island effect. The data series is discussed in: Bergstr\u00f6m H, Moberg A. (2002): Daily air temperature and pressure series for Uppsala (1722\u20131998). Climatic Change 53, 213\u2013252, doi:10.1023\/A:1014983229213.\r\n\r\n\r\nLongyearbyen, Svalbard: Data were obtained by personal communication with \u00d8yvind Nordli at the Norwegian Meteorological Institute. The data series is discussed in: Nordli \u00d8, Przybylak R, Ogilvie AEJ, Isaksen K. (2014): Long-term temperature trends and variability on Spitsbergen: the extended Svalbard Airport temperature series, 1898\u20132012. Polar Research, 33:1, doi:10.3402\/polar.v33.21349.\r\n\r\n\r\nThe following persons provided various kinds of help with putting together and updating this dataset: Frederik Schenk and Anders Moberg at Stockholm University; Erik Kjellstr\u00f6m at the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute; Veijo Pohjola, Ward van Pelt and Erik Sahl\u00e9e at the Uppsala University; and \u00d8yvind Nordli at the Norwegian Meteorological Institute.","category":"Atmosphere","subcategory":"Temperature","keywords":"Air temperature; Data visualisation","scientist":"Nina Kirchner","firstname":"Nina","lastname":"Kirchner","address":"Department of Physical Geography, Stockholm University","postalcode":"SE-106 91","city":"Stockholm","province":"","country":"Sweden","parameters":"Earth science services > Education\/outreach","location":"Continent > Europe > Northern Europe","progress":"Completed","language":"English","project":"","publisher":"Bolin Centre Database","version":"1","constrains":"None","access":"Free"}]