The Rate of Change: July 1, 2019
This graph shows us our past, and two possible futures.
Each thin vertical stripe represents the average global temperature in a single year (reds = warmer, blues = cooler). On the far left is our past, stretching back to the year 1850. We’re in the middle. On the right, the path forks into two possible futures, ending in the year 2200. One future is warm, and the other is much warmer.
Here’s a version of the graph that shows four possible futures.
These brilliant visualizations are brought to us by Alexander Radtke. He took the Warming Stripes idea developed by Ed Hawkins, and extended it forward in time, using the four major paths to the future adopted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
You can find these graphs on his website, Warning Stripes, as well as more details on how they were created. Here’s an annotated version (click to enlarge):
The lowest road, known as RCP 8.5, is widely considered to be a terrifying worst-case scenario. The highest road, known as RCP 2.6, is a best-case scenario, describing a world where we limit warming to under 2 degrees Celsius.
Which road are we on? At the moment we appear to be headed somewhere between the bottom two paths. To limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, we’ll need emissions to peak in the next few years, and shrink in half by 2030. However, carbon emissions are still rising, as you can see for yourself in the graph below (and you can dig into the data here).
According to the most recent BP annual review of global energy use, 2018 saw a 2% rise in carbon dioxide emissions, the largest rise in seven years, driven by an uptick in global energy consumption. The chief economist behind the BP report described this rise in carbon emissions as “roughly equivalent to [..] increasing the number of passenger cars on the planet by a third.” And that’s just 2018.
To
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