'Overwhelming' evidence of climate change regardless of weather map colors | Fact check

Kate S. Petersen, USA TODAY
·5 min read
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The claim: Fiery red color palette on weather map is the only evidence of climate change

A Feb. 1 Instagram post (direct link, archive link) shows images of two weather reports – one from 2017 and one from 2022 – broadcast by the German weather channel tagesthemen. The 2017 image shows a green-toned map of Germany with temperature values superimposed over different areas of the country, while the 2022 image shows the same area with lower temperatures, but the map is colored in shades of red, orange and yellow.

"The only evidence of (((climate change))) is a change in color on your dumby (sic) screens," reads the post's caption.

The post garnered more than 1,300 likes in a week.

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Our rating: False

More than a century of observational and experimental research shows that climate change is happening and is driven by greenhouse gases emitted by human activity. The new map color was part of a broader graphic design update, the TV station said.

'Overwhelming' evidence that human greenhouse gas emissions are causing climate change

The style of tagesthemen's temperature maps changed in 2020 when the public broadcaster ARD Weather Competence Center began producing the show, according to Silke Hansen, head of the ARD Weather Competence Center.

"We changed the entire design and adapted it to the design of the most important news program on German television, 'tagesschau', which we have been producing for ARD since 1960," she told USA TODAY in an email. "The temperature colors are used to depict the degrees in color. This makes it possible for the viewer to estimate the temperature even in a place where there is no temperature number. The scale can range from dark red for hot temperatures to cold blue."

She said tagesschau had been using color to depict temperature on maps since the 1990s, although there have been redesigns since that time due to technological developments in graphics software, the display of colors on monitors and the resolution of monitors.

The "evidence" of climate change is extensive no matter what graphic design choices are made by a German weather station.

Multiple independent climate agencies have reported a long-term increase in Earth's average global temperature. Scientists have also documented the consequences of this warming, including polar and glacial ice melt, sea level rise (due to ice melt and the expansion of warming seawater) and an increase in the frequency of certain extreme weather events, such as heat waves.

There are various ways scientists know greenhouse gas emissions due to human activity cause this warming, Josh Willis, a NASA climate scientist, previously told USA TODAY.

Researchers have shown that CO2 slows the escape of heat into space and that the amount of global warming that has occurred "matches what we expect based on the increased CO2 we've added," said Willis. "The timing of the warming matches the timing of the CO2 increase caused by people. Not only that, the timing of global sea level rise matches the CO2 increase."

Scientists also know the excess CO2 in the atmosphere comes from humans because it matches the amount humans have emitted and because a disproportionate amount of the accumulated carbon is the type found in fossil fuels.

Further, researchers have been able to test their understanding of climate change and greenhouse gas physics by developing climate models and later examining how accurately they predicted warming. Major climate models published between 1973 and 2013 were fairly accurate in their projections, according to a Carbon Brief analysis.

"Climate models published since 1973 have generally been quite skillful in projecting future warming," Carbon Brief reported. "While some were too low and some too high, they all show outcomes reasonably close to what has actually occurred, especially when discrepancies between predicted and actual CO2 concentrations and other climate forcings are taken into account."

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Scientists working at oil giant ExxonMobil in the 1970s were also quite skillful at predicting future global warming based on CO2 emissions, according to a 2023 analysis that found 63% to 83% of the projections reported by ExxonMobil researchers accurately predicted subsequent global warming.

Many different lines of evidence show "industrial pollution is the cause of recent global heating," Dargan Frierson, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Washington, previously told USA TODAY. "This is not exactly a 'whodunit' situation. The evidence is overwhelming."

USA TODAY reached out to the Instagram user who shared the post for comment but did not immediately receive a response.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Earth's climate changing regardless of weather graphics | Fact check