Your Life in Weeks × ClimateStripes

The Problem

Climate change data is presented as either abstract global trends (IPCC reports, decadal averages) or apocalyptic future projections. Both approaches fail to create emotional connection: the first is too impersonal, the second too overwhelming and distant.

Meanwhile, Tim Urban’s “Your Life in Weeks” visualization resonated because it made time tangible—seeing your entire life as a grid of weeks creates visceral awareness of time’s finiteness. But it lacked external context: what happened in the world during those weeks?

The insight: what if we could anchor climate change to personal time? Show the climate stripes you’ve already lived through, making climate change not a future threat but a present reality you’ve experienced.

What I Built

An interactive visualization that overlays your personal life timeline (in weeks) with ClimateStripes temperature data, creating a unique “climate autobiography”:

Personalized Timeline Generation

• Enter your birthdate → generates a grid where each cell = one week of your life
• Years lived are filled; future weeks shown in outline
• Scroll through your life: childhood, adolescence, key milestones

Climate Data Overlay

• Each year’s row is color-coded using warming stripes methodology
• Blue (cooler) to red (warmer) based on global temperature anomaly
• Hover states show: “Age 8 (1998): +0.56°C above baseline”

Contextual Anchors

• Users can mark personal milestones: “Started school” “Got married” “First child born”
• Platform overlays climate milestones: “Paris Agreement signed” “Hottest year on record” “Arctic sea ice minimum”
• Creates narrative: “You were 23 when Earth crossed 1°C warming”

Emotional Impact Design

• Gradient shows clear warming trend from birth to present
• Future weeks extrapolate to 2050/2100 projections (RCP scenarios)
• Stark visual: early life in blues/greens, recent years in oranges/reds

Share & Compare

• Generate personalized image: “My Life in Climate Stripes”
• Compare generations: “Baby Boomer vs. Gen Z climate experience”
• Embeddable for articles/campaigns

The Tech Stack

• Frontend: React with D3.js for data visualization and SVG rendering
• Data Sources: HadCRUT5 global temperature dataset (Met Office)
• Computation: Client-side calculation of weeks lived + temperature mapping
• Hosting: Vercel static site (bakeoff.eddowding.com)
• Sharing: Canvas rendering for social media image generation

Lessons Learned

Temporal Anchoring Creates Urgency Showing climate change as something that already happened during your lifetime shifts perception from “future problem” to “current reality I’ve lived through.” Test users consistently reported surprise: “I didn’t realize it had warmed this much already.” Lesson: frame climate change as present tense, not future conditional.

Personal Milestones Bridge Abstract to Concrete The breakthrough came when we added milestone markers. “You were born during the coldest decade of your life” or “Every year since you turned 18 has been warmer than your childhood average” makes temperature anomalies emotionally resonant. Lesson: data needs narrative anchors that connect to memory.

Generational Comparison Reveals Injustice Placing a 1950s-born person’s stripes next to a 2010s-born child’s shows the inequity: older generations lived most of their lives in stable climate; children today were born into the warming period and will live their entire lives in it. This visualization became a powerful tool for climate justice conversations. Lesson: comparison views reveal systemic patterns individuals can’t see.

Simplicity Enables Virality The concept is instantly graspable: “your life + climate stripes.” No tutorial needed. This simplicity drove social sharing—people intuitively understood it and wanted to generate their own. We resisted adding complexity (precipitation, emissions, regional data) to preserve the clarity. Lesson: virality requires zero cognitive load to “get it.”

Future Projection Creates Agency Showing future weeks in projected warming colors (RCP 4.5 vs. 8.5 scenarios) gave users sense of agency: “which future do we choose?” The visual difference between climate action and inaction, mapped to their remaining lifetime, motivated action. Lesson: hope requires showing that outcomes aren’t predetermined.

Open Source Multiplied Impact Releasing the code on GitHub let climate educators, NGOs, and museums adapt it. It’s been embedded in school curricula, museum installations, and campaign microsites. By not controlling distribution, we maximized reach. Lesson: some projects create more value through reuse than through ownership.