Climate change is a hot topic and some people would rather avoid looking at the data altogether. However, a small new study suggests that serving up the data with a side of art might make it slightly easier to digest.
Science communicators have noticed that art can get people to talk about difficult topics in a more engaging way than by simply sharing data and graphs. To find out how much of a difference it really makes, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison put a climate painting to the test.
They were interested in the way that people responded to an artwork called Summer Heat, 2020 by Diane Burko. This painting uses blue and red colours to show melting glaciers, wildfires, a map of the world and a graph of atmospheric carbon dioxide levels.
Even though temperatures fluctuate, extreme weather events are becoming more common every year, and that’s thought to be a direct effect of climate change, which can be seen most clearly in the increase in carbon dioxide over time.
More than six hundred volunteers were shown one of four versions of the painting: The original work, the same work but with a more detailed graph, or just the data by itself in either a simple or more detailed graph.
