Teaching Science

Climate Clock

A simple project I found out about at the Canadian Meteorological and Oceanic Society Conference.

Time is the key metric we need to include to make climate change relatable.

We all now know that the global average temperature passing the threshold of 2° above pre-industrial averages is the point where really bad things start to happen… and it becomes much more difficult to slow down the devastating effects of climate change. But if you look online and in the media, it’s very hard to find a good reference for when 2° will actually happen. Presently, the 2° target floats abstractly in the public mind. The Climate Clock acts a public line in the sand and says, this is the date. It is a measuring stick by which we can evaluate our progress.

Every spring, the Climate Clock will be stopped. A group of leading climate scientists from around the world will evaluate the latest data; and then we will restart the Clock with a new time. We will be able to see then how we are doing in relation to 2°. Have we gained time or lost time?

Humanity has the power to add time to the Clock, but only if we work collectivity and measure our progress against defined targets.

The Clock is built to scale. It can be downloaded and embedded on any website as an iframe. For outdoor building projections or at conferences, the Clock can be downloaded as a simple Google Chrome app and played on any computer running the latest version of Chrome (no internet connection is required as the Clock’s date and time is validated by the internal date and time of the computer). We can easily customize the Clock to any language but presently it runs in French and English. Please contact us of you would like to project the Climate Clock and we will send you the instructions for how to do so.

Phase 2 of the Clock will be building an interactive companion website with data visualization all related to time. It will allow the user to manipulate the relevant data points and explore the relationship between the factors that effect the date of 2° through an interactive graphic interface.

This site will allow users to manipulate multi-factor climate data and experience a visual representation of the effects on temperature and time on the Clock. By city, by country, by continent; what does the data really mean in terms of time?

For example, If all countries stick to their Paris Agreement promises how much time does that buy us on the Clock? (Answer, only 6 years). If North America switches to green energy how many years does that add to the Clock? If China goes vegetarian how many years?

The Clock represents a radical new way to measure climate change, by using a metric we understand. This relationship between temperature and time is crucial in the story of climate change but has been largely missing from the narrative.

We don’t measure our lives in degrees. We measure our lives in years.

Next year I’m going to use this as a dramatic introduction to climate change, along with the section from Hot Earth Dreams about agriculture starting to break at around 2° of warming. With a bit of luck Phase 2 will be available by then, so the kids can do some exploration on their own.

Linked in the grade 10 climate unit.