Global warming is real. Watch

16 พฤษภาคม 2559

A British climate scientist has released an animation which clearly shows how the Earth has warmed since 1850 and is rapidly approaching dangerous levels.

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Global warming is real. Watch

To the ordinary person, the weather certainly seems to be getting warmer. Scientists tell us it is getting warmer, dangerously so, and they have many charts and graphs to prove it.

There are still doubters, however, who say the weather always changes and everything will be all right before long.

Charts and graphs can be difficult for people to understand. Ed Hawkins, a British climate scientist from the University of Reading, wanted to find an easy way to illustrate what is happening.

He had good temperature data beginning with 1850, a period known as "pre-industrial" – the time before heavy industries changed our world forever. Acting on a suggestion by colleague Jan Fuglestvedt, he designed an animation in which temperatures are presented in a continuous spiral.

Last week, he released his animation through his Twitter account (Ed Hawkins ) and it has been viewed by tens of thousands of people. Watch as it goes into motion.

(Ed Hawkins, University of Reading)

Different colours are used to illustrate the passage of time. The spiral begins with purple for early years, then changes to blue, green and finally to yellow for the most recent years.

The animation clearly shows that warming has accelerated in recent years. If this continues, it won't be long before average temperatures on Earth will be 1.5 degrees Celsius higher than they were in pre-industrial times.

It is unclear what will happen if temperatures continue to climb. At 2°C, scientists say sea levels will likely rise rapidly and extreme heat could kill off the crops we depend on for food.

NASA has its own animation (30 seconds) showing the warming trend from 1880-2015. It is even scarier.