An English Football Club Is Adding Global Warming Data to Its Kits
On the sleeves of its home kit, Reading F.C. will feature 150 red and blue stripes that show a time-lapse image of rising temperatures.
The new home kit for the Reading Football Club incorporates “climate stripes” that show the impacts of climate change on rising temperatures.
Courtesy of Reading Football ClubWhen the English football club Reading F.C. takes to the field for its first home game of the season this weekend, the sleeves on its kits will look a bit different from years past. Instead of the club’s traditional blue and white bands, fans will see 150 narrow stripes in varying shades of red and blue. The change isn’t about aesthetics: The new sleeves are a data visualization of global warming known as climate stripes.
Each stripe represents a year, beginning at the club’s founding in 1871. Below-average annual temperatures are shown in blue and above-average in red, making the sleeves’ shift from cool blue at the neck to fire red at the arm a stark, time-lapse image of climate change. “The stripes are an easy-to-understand communication tool for people to grasp the emergency of the situation,” says Reading’s commercial director, Tim Kilpatrick.