The cliffs are one of several landmarks around the world displaying the warming stripes today to highlight the issue of climate change
The White Cliffs of Dover have been illuminated in blue and red stripes that represent the change in UK temperatures over the last 100 years.
Other landmarks around the world, including the Tate Modern chimney in London, Toronto’s CN Tower in Canada and Philadelphia’s Ben Franklin Bridge in the USA, will also display the climate warming stripes today, 21 June, to mark Show Your Stripes Day. People around the world are encouraged to download and share the graphic, and to start a conversation about the impact climate change is having where they live.
The warming stripes were created in 2018 by professor Ed Hawkins, a climate scientist at the University of Reading and National Centre for Atmospheric Science, as a simple and striking visualisation of climate change. Each coloured bar represents the average temperature over a year; shades of blue indicate cooler-than-average years, while red shows years that were hotter than average. Altogether, they reveal a clear rise in global temperatures over the last century.
Show Your Stripes day was started as a way to encourage people to think and talk about the impacts of this change, both globally and locally. ‘In 2022, millions of people saw the stripes at Reading Festival, London Fashion Week and on football kits and started conversations about climate change,’ says Professor Hawkins. ‘Displaying the stripes on the White Cliffs of Dover and other landmarks will hopefully lead to more conversations about our warming world and inspire people to work together to tackle climate change.
‘We are seeing a rapid rise in temperature, mainly due to burning fossil fuels, and this already means we are experiencing more intense extreme weather with severe consequences for all of us. Every bit of future warming will make those consequences worse.’
