This animation went viral when Hawkins—a British climate scientist—posted it on Twitter in 2016. Since then, it has continued to advance the public’s understanding of global warming. Comprehensible and visually arresting, the animation illustrates the steady rise in global temperatures from 1850 to 2024. Each revolution of the spiral represents a single year’s average temperature. The concentric circles allow us to see how the temperature has changed relative to the baseline, which Hawkins set as the average in 1850–1900, the preindustrial period. His animation shows how rapidly temperatures have risen during the twenty-first century; we are precariously close to the 1.5°C increase limit set by the 2016 Paris Agreement. An increase of 2°C is considered a critical threshold.
Pirouette: Turning Points in Design, January 26, 2025–November 15, 2025
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Visualization design
Visualization design aims to make information understandable and even beautiful. It translates and synthesizes highly complex ideas and experiences into clearer formats, bridging the gap between quantitative and qualitative data through visual means.
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