NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio wound 145 years of global temperature records into a single spinning spiral, and it’s genuinely terrifying to watch. This is real measured data, not a projection. We are not easing into a warmer world; we are sprinting into one, and we need to do far more than we are.
The visualization is by NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio, created by Mark SubbaRao (NASA/GSFC), building on the “climate spiral” format popularized by climate scientist Ed Hawkins in 2016. Data comes from the GISS Surface Temperature Analysis (GISTEMP v4).