Climate Change Statistics Part 1 from 3 parts in total.
Climate change has a great impact on the Earth and ecoBirdy wants to take action to make everyone aware of it. By joining Milan Design Week from 5th to 12th of September 2021 with the exhibition Climate Change Statistics, ecoBirdy aims to raise awareness on reusing our resources to avoid waste and to have a better and healthier planet for future generations. Rossana Orlandi Gallery’s project RoGUILTLESSPLASTIC at National Museum of Science and Technology Leonardo da Vinci in Milan, Italy, makes the perfect sustainable context for this message to be delivered.
During COVID-19 pandemic, people have been used to read daily updated statistics. Since the numbers and data were easily understood as dramatic and frightening, ecoBirdy came up with an idea to address another huge worldwide issue. Climate Change Statistics illustrates the impact that climate variation has on our planet through an enlarged columns graph installation.
ecoBirdy used the 2021 United Nation IPCC report to explain how the planet is changing due to the climate crisis. Nine of the most alarming data related to global warming were chosen to create a path under which people can pass to discover the current state of the planet. As people walk under the 100% recycled fabric columns, they realize the impact of climate change by looking at the statistics. These changes in Earth’s health are key to understand how critical the climate change matter is and how fast it is happening.
Part 1: Sea Level Rise, Sea Ice Melting and Glacier Loss
Sea ice melting and glacier loss are the main reasons of sea level rise. These three data are related between them because as ices around the planet disappear, ocean level increases.
Sea Level Rise
From 1993 sea level has steadily risen of 3.4 mm per year, almost 10 cm in less than 30 years [1]. There are two factors that have a major responsibility on this: the ice melting from both glaciers and ice sheets, which causes fresh water to add into the oceans, and the expansion of seawater as it gets warmer.
Sea Ice Melting
In the last 1,500 years, ice has been melted at a rate and extent never seen before [2]. During the modern times, the amount of ice in the world has decreased dramatically due also to the human component. As human activity increases, the rising temperatures in water and atmosphere will likely bring ice-free Arctic summer, even by 2030.
Glacier Loss
Mountain glaciers around the Earth are alarmingly disappearing. Between 1980 and 2018 glaciers have lost 21.7 meters of liquid water each [3], becoming one of the causes of sea level rise. In the 1980s glaciers lost 171 mm per year, in the 2020 updated report, glaciers lost more than 1.2 meters. If glaciers disappear, hundreds of millions of people that rely on glacier as water supply, will lose their access to them.
Continue to part 2
Source references:
[1] https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/sea-level/
[3] https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-glacier-mass-balance
