Assessing the extent to which ‘warming stripes’ are an effective format for communicating environmental risks

Dawson, Ian and Zhang, Danni (2025) Assessing the extent to which ‘warming stripes’ are an effective format for communicating environmental risks. Society for Risk Analysis - Europe - Conference 2025, Stavanger University, Stavanger, Norway. 15 - 19 Jun 2025.

Abstract

In 2018, Professor Ed Hawkins published an image consisting of blue and red vertical stripes in various colour saturations that represented the change of the average global annual temperature between 1850 and 2018. Subsequently, the image (a.k.a., warming stripes or climate stripes) ‘went viral’ on social media (#showyourstripes) and became an iconic symbol of the threat posed by climate change. Furthermore, these stripe graph formats are now increasingly being adapted by the scientific community (e.g., the IPCC) and used to communicate other environmental risks (e.g., biodiversity loss, sea-level change). However, no studies have empirically assessed the extent to which stripe graphs influence knowledge, perceptions, and behaviours concerning environmental issues. To address this knowledge gap, we conducted a study in which participants were divided into three groups. Group 1 saw Hawkins’ original blue-red stripe graph. Group 2 saw the same graph, but the blue-red hues had been changed to yellow-purple hues respectively. Group 3 (control condition) did not see a graph. Participants then completed a series of measures, including climate change knowledge, perceived risk, behavioural intentions, and subjective graph evaluations. Our analysis identified no between-group differences for knowledge, risk perceptions, and behavioural intentions. However, we found participants evaluated the blue-red graph significantly (ps < .0001) more likeable, trustworthy, helpful, and accurate than the yellow-purple graph, even though the two graphs depicted exactly the same data. We also found that stripe graphs influenced participants to make inaccurately high estimates of future global temperatures. Hence, our results suggest that, while the blue-red stripe graph is extremely popular, it may not be effective at enhancing knowledge or motivating mitigation behaviours. Considering the popularity of stripe graphs among laypeople and, increasingly, the scientific community, it appears further research is needed to identify how the format can be enhanced to better achieve important environmental risk communication goals.

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Contributors

Author: Ian Dawson

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