A Lifetime of Change by Julia Janicki

“A Lifetime of Change” is an interactive, user-driven web-based project visualizing different climate change Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) scenarios across different timelines. Inspired by Ed Hawkins "Climate Stripes", the user is able to choose their birth year, a well-known person from a predetermined list, a climate scenario, and compare climate stripes side by side over their lifetimes. At any given year, the user can pause and see the temperature difference between that year and the year they were born, and compare it to that of the chosen famous person.

Each stripe represents the annual temperature change relative to pre-industrial levels, defined as the long-term average between 1850-1900. Historical temperature anomalies calculated by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) are depicted until 2023, while projections based on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) five Shared Socioeconomic Pathways are represented from 2023 onwards. SSPs are climate change scenarios that project different societal, demographic, and economic changes up to the year 2100.

We used historical data from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), calculating the mean of six datasets: HadCRUT5, NOAA, GlobalTemp, GISTEMP, ERA5 1, and JRA55. We also referenced the WMO’s "State of the Global Climate 2023" report. The data for the projected temperature anomalies based on the five SSP scenarios after 2023 are from the IPCC Sixth Assessment report.

We wanted to create a project visualizing how extreme temperatures can become due to the climate crisis, but in a way that is a bit more engaging and digestible, and in a manner that the user can relate to more easily. We did so by showing how much temperature anomalies have shifted throughout different lifetimes.