hildren hold icy water bottles to their cheeks to cool off amid the extreme heat on May 20, 2026 in New York City. (Photo by Liao Pan/China News Service/VCG via Getty Images)
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As communities around the world prepare to observe Show Your Stripes Day on June 20, climate scientists and advocates are encouraging people to share a powerful visual representation of climate change: warming stripes.
The annual campaign uses colorful graphics to illustrate more than a century of temperature changes. Each stripe represents the average temperature for a single year compared with a long-term historical average. Blue stripes indicate cooler-than-average years, while red stripes represent warmer-than-average years.
‘Show Your Stripes Day’ explained
Big picture view:
The warming stripes concept, created by climate scientist Professor Ed Hawkins, spans temperatures from 1850 through 2025 and shows a dramatic transition from predominantly blue stripes to deep reds in recent decades, reflecting rapid warming and the accelerating effects of human-caused climate change.
Climate Central analyzed historical temperature data through 2025 to produce warming stripes graphics for 199 U.S. cities and 49 states (excluding Hawaii).
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Strong red shifts in US reflect rapid warming
U.S. Warming Stripes through 2025 (Climate Central)
By the numbers:
Most U.S. locations showed a strong warming trend, especially in the fastest-warming regions such as the Southwest, Northeast, and Alaska.
In 2025, the following cities were warmest relative to the 20th-century average: Phoenix, AZ (6.5°F above average); Reno, NV (6.3°F); Salt Lake City, UT (5.9°) and El Paso, TX (5.1°F).
Global temperatures remain near record highs
The backstory:
Climate Central says the visualizations come at a time when global temperatures remain near record highs. According to the organization, 2025 ranked as the third-warmest year since modern records began in 1850, extending an extraordinary run of global heat that included record-breaking temperatures in both 2023 and 2024.
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Exceeding 1.5°C in a single year, which first occurred in 2024, does not mean the world has breached the 1.5°C limit set by the Paris Agreement. But Climate Central said the limit will be reached in the early 2030s if current rates of warming continue.
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