The Belgian Climate Centre to mark Show Your Stripes Day

This Saturday, 21 June, is #ShowYourStripes Day, and the Belgian Climate Centre is proud to be part of this growing global movement. Created by Professor Ed Hawkins at the University of Reading, the ‘warming stripes’ are a simple but powerful way to visualise the change in average temperatures over the last 130+ years. Each stripe represents a single year, with blue for cooler-than-average years and red for warmer-than-average years, clearly showing the rapid heating of our planet.

On this occasion, we are highlighting the warming stripes for Belgium. These stripes represent our nation's own climate story, showing how the warming trend accelerates, with the warmest years (dark red lines) falling in the last decade. The Belgian stripes use the robust, long-term data collected by the Royal Meteorological Institute in Uccle, one of the longest historical records, representing over 190 years since 1833. This is a powerful example of the crucial work national scientific institutions do to help us all understand and communicate climate change.

Want to help spread the word? Feel free to share the Belgian stripes. To find the graphic for your own region, visit the official #ShowYourStripes website and help start a conversation online: showyourstripes.info