June 21 is Show Your Stripes Day!

Special Edition: Warming Stripes

June 21 is the longest day in the northern hemisphere, and it’s also #ShowYourStripes day. What stripes, you ask? Your warming stripes, of course!

Created by climate scientist

Ed Hawkins

from the University of Reading, the warming stripes show how temperature has changed over time. Each stripe represents a year. A cooler than average year is blue; an average year is white; a warmer than average year is pink; and you can guess what red means. Unfortunately, he had to add another dark red line after 2023, yet another record-breaking year.

Last year, I wrote about how the sporting world used warming stripes to get people talking about climate change: the Reading Football Club in Ed’s town featured red and blue “warming stripes” on the sleeves of their uniforms, which were also made from recycled plastic bottles, and the U.S. ski team donned climate-change-themed race suits when they competed at the world championships.

This year, even more people are getting on board. In December, Envision Racing partnered with Ed to feature warming stripes on the team’s car and kit to promote their “Race Against Climate Change” program, which supports the transition to e-mobility and renewable energy both on and off the track.

In the Swiss city of St. Gallen, the Climate Stairs Project has painted each of the 162 steps of the Dohlengässlein to represent the warming from the year 1868 to 2030. “With each step, the body temperature rises slightly. This is similar to what is happening to our planet. The climate is warming up from year to year, in Switzerland even twice as fast as worldwide. The Climate Stairs want to raise awareness on this social challenge,” they explain.

Austria lined a train with their warming stripes “so that climate doesn’t go under the wheels,” a town in Germany has electric busses featuring their stripes, and last night, a number of prominent U.S. landmarks were illuminated with the colors that show our changing climate.Too many people still see climate change as a distant issue that isn’t affecting them here and now. These stripes are a powerful reminder of the risks we’re running, and the urgent need to address them today.

WHAT YOU CAN DO

At COP27 with Bernadette Woods Placky from Climate Central (left), wearing a climate stripes scarf (centre), and more scarves from the House of Tammam's 2024 Climate Scarf Collection in collaboration with the European Space Agency (right)

Today’s “what you can do” is simple – show off your stripes! Find your local stripes here, download the graphics, and share them on social media.

You can also wear the warming stripes. I have a warming stripes dress from Lucy at the House of Tammam, who also make the climate stripe scarves you can see on Bernadette and the models on the right. Lucy just emailed me yesterday to say that, today only, you get 10 percent off one with the code SHOWYOURSTRIPES (not sponsored, just an FYI!).

I’ve seen many creative ways people are showing their stripes. If you’re a knitter like me, you can get a pattern for the warming stripes from The Tempestry Project and knit a scarf that represents them. I've also seen painted fingernails, artwork to hang on the walls of your home, sidewalk chalk art, friendship bracelets, makeup, and dress shirts with 800,000 years of Antarctic temperature and CO2 data inside the cuff.

What do all of these things have in common? They open the door to a conversation about climate change. So #showyourstripes and get the conversation going today!