The Climate Spiral Demonstrates the Power of Sharing Creative Ideas

Abstract

Effectively communicating climate change is an enormous challenge, especially as there is a need to reach broad audiences across the planet. On 10 May 2016, an animated spiral graphic showing the familiar rise of global temperatures in an unfamiliar way (Fig. 1; Fig. ES1 in the online supplement: https:// doi.org/10.1175/BAMS­D­18­0228.2) was published on Twitter and subsequently “went viral.” The original tweet (Hawkins 2016a) has been viewed more than 3.7 million times, but the reach is substantially larger when considering other media channels. For example, the animation was viewed several million times on various Facebook pages and through many online stories (e.g., Mooney 2016; Plumer 2016). Prominent people known to have used or shared the graphic include Elon Musk, Bernie Sanders, the artist Banksy, and senior policymakers in the United Kingdom and Australia. It was even shortlisted for a design award (Kantar Information is Beautiful Awards 2016) and translated into several different languages by the U.S. Department of State (Buchanan 2016) for their online web pages.