The Climate Clock is a graphic to demonstrate how quickly the planet is approaching 1.5 °C of global warming, given current emissions trends. It also shows the amount of CO₂ already emitted, and the global warming to date. The Climate Clock was launched in 2015 to provide a measuring stick against which viewers can track

climate change mitigation Climate change mitigation is action to limit climate change by reducing Greenhouse gas emissions, emissions of greenhouse gases or Carbon sink, removing those gases from the atmosphere. The recent rise in global average temperature is mostly caus ...

progress. The date shown when humanity reaches 1.5°C will move closer as emissions rise, and further away as emissions decrease. An alternative view projects the time remaining to 2.0°C of warming. The clock is updated every year to reflect the latest global CO₂ emissions trend and rate of climate warming. As of June 2022, the clock counts down towards late July 2029. On September 20, 2021, the clock was delayed to July 28, 2028, likely because of the COP26 Conference and th
land protection
by indigenous peoples. The clock is hosted by Human Impact Lab, itself part of

Concordia University Concordia University ( French: ''Université Concordia'') is a public research university located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Founded in 1974 following the merger of Loyola College and Sir George Williams University, Concordia is one of the t ...

. Organisations supporting the climate clock include Concordia University, the

David Suzuki Foundation The David Suzuki Foundation is a science-based non-profit environmental organization headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, with offices in Montreal and Toronto. It was established as a federally registered Canadian charity on Jan ...

, Future Earth, and the Climate Reality Project.

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1.5 °C is an important threshold for many climate impacts, as shown by the

Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 °C The Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C (SR15) was published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on 8 October 2018. The report, approved in Incheon, South Korea, includes over 6,000 scientific references, and was prep ...

. Every increment to global temperature is expected to increase weather extremes, such as heat waves and extreme precipitation events. There is also the risk of irreversible ice sheet loss. Consequent sea level rise also increases sharply between 1.5 °C and 2 °C, and virtually all corals could be wiped out at 2 °C warming.

The New York Climate Clock

In late September 2020, artists and activists, Gan Golan, Katie Peyton Hofstadter, Adrian Carpenter and Andrew Boyd repurposed the '' Metronome'' in

Union Square Union commonly refers to: * Trade union, an organization of workers * Union (set theory), in mathematics, a fundamental operation on sets Union may also refer to: Arts and entertainment Music * Union (band), an American rock group ** ''Un ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

to show the Climate Clock. The goal was to "remind the world every day just how perilously close we are to the brink." This is in juxtaposition to the

Doomsday Clock The Doomsday Clock is a symbol that represents the likelihood of a man-made global catastrophe, in the opinion of the members of the ''Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists''. Maintained since 1947, the clock is a metaphor for threats to humanity ...

, which measures a variety of factors that could lead to "destroying the world" using "dangerous technologies of our making," with

climate change In common usage, climate change describes global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes to E ...

being one of the smaller factors. This specific installation is expected to be one of many in cities around the world. At the time of installation, the

clock A clock or a timepiece is a device used to measure and indicate time. The clock is one of the oldest human inventions, meeting the need to measure intervals of time shorter than the natural units such as the day, the lunar month and the ...

read 7 years and 102 days.

Greta Thunberg Greta Tintin Eleonora Ernman Thunberg (; born 3 January 2003) is a Swedish environmental activist who is known for challenging world leaders to take immediate action for climate change mitigation. Thunberg's activism began when she persuaded ...

, Swedish

environmental activist The environmental movement (sometimes referred to as the ecology movement), also including conservation and green politics, is a diverse philosophical, social, and political movement for addressing environmental issues. Environmentalists advoc ...

, was involved in the project early on, and reportedly received a hand-held version of the climate clock. Since its inception, the New York Climate Clock has added a second set of numbers for the percentage of the world's energy use that comes from renewable energy sources.

References

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External links

Climate Clock website

Another climate clock

Climate Action Tracker: continuously tracks emissions of individual countries
Alert measurement systems Clocks Political symbols

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The New York Climate Clock

See also

References

External links