Climate Action

This alarming chart shows the reality of global warming over 100 years

Adelie penguins stand atop ice near the French station at Dumont d’Urville in East Antarctica January 22, 2010. Russia and the Ukraine on November 1, 2013 again scuttled plans to create the world's largest ocean sanctuary in Antarctica, pristine waters rich in energy and species such as whales, penguins and vast stocks of fish, an environmentalist group said. The Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources wound up a week-long meeting in Hobart, Australia, considering proposals for two "marine protected areas" aimed at conserving the ocean wilderness from fishing, drilling for oil and other industrial interests. Picture taken January 22, 2010. To match story ANTARCTIC-ENVIRONMENT/  REUTERS/Pauline Askin  (ANTARCTICA - Tags: ENVIRONMENT POLITICS ANIMALS TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY) - RTX14WAX

Look what happens when you get to 1997 Image: REUTERS/Pauline Askine

John McKenna
Senior Writer, Forum Agenda

Data showing spikes in hot and cold temperatures since the start of the last century show how the planet is warming up.

Antti Lipponen, a researcher at the Finnish Meteorological Institute, has compiled weather statistics between 1900 and 2016 and turned them into a 35-second video.

The results back up what climate scientists have been saying for decades – the planet is warming up:

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Lipponen used data from NASA to show how spikes in high temperatures have really gathered pace in the last 30 years.

While in 1980 countries experiencing high temperature anomalies were still few and far between …

By 2016, the majority of countries across the planet were experiencing average annual temperatures at least 2°C warmer than the data’s baseline average temperatures, recorded between 1951 and 1980.

Lipponen’s animation is the latest in a series of graphic illustrations showing how the planet is warming.

Image: Antti Lipponen

The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in August confirmed that 2016 was the hottest year globally since temperatures records began 137 years ago – and the third year in a row that the record has been broken.

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