Climate Warming Stripes on Exminster school
What are Warming Stripes, or Climate Stripes?
Warming stripes are a great and easy way to easily visualise the world’s rising temperature and how our climate has changed.
They simply denote the average temperature of each year by a different colour, with blue colours showing cooler years and red colours warmer years. As our climate has changed over the last century, we see clearly how the stripes change from more blues to more reds, although individual years can still fluctuate up or down.
Here we are able to produce the warming stripes specifically for Exminster. They show how our climate has changed from 1884 up to 2021.
Why paint them on the school?
Education and awareness of environmental issues are vital to help prepare for a sustainable tomorrow. At Exminster Community Primary School we take great pride in our pupils’ interest and knowledge about the environment and the health of our planet. Concern for the community and the whole world aligns with our Rainbow Values.
By showing the warming stripes for Exminster we hope this serves as a reminder of the importance of environmental awareness and that climate change is with us here and now. They also show a solidarity with other places around the world where climate is changing and having a range of impacts.
Global and local climate
The whole world has warmed, but each location has its own individual history. National and local weather differences mean there is different detail, but the same big picture. Like a fingerprint these are unique for every location.
Why not visit https://showyourstripes.info/s/globe and see stripes for other countries. Do you have friends or family who live abroad? Or have you visited or lived abroad? You can see that each country has different data for their warming stripes, but no country can escape the “global” nature of global warming.
Where else can we see them?
Warming Stripes were the brainchild of Professor Ed Hawkins at the University of Reading. They have really taken off and are now commonly seen in many places to show awareness of climate change and support for environmental issues. Ed was excited to hear of our stripes and said, “I hope that these warming stripes for Exminster will start vital conversations about our changing climate and about the choices that we can all take to reduce carbon emissions.”
For example,
- Reading FC have warming stripes on their 2022 football kit: https://www.readingfc.co.uk/news/2022/june/21/show-your-stripes-and-share-our-hoops-for-the-future/
- Buses: https://www.reading-buses.co.uk/show-your-stripes
- Festivals: https://sites.reading.ac.uk/connected/2019/08/27/climate-stripes-at-reading-festival/
These are just some examples. To our knowledge Exminster is one of the first schools to proudly display their own Warming Stripes.
Data acknowledgement
The data for our warming stripes are obtained from the Met Office’s HadUK-Grid dataset of historical climate records for the UK (https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/climate/maps-and-data/data/index). We gratefully acknowledge help from Dan Hollis at the Met Office for helping process this data for us