For the 16th Congress of the National Association of Health Informers by which the international #ShowYourStripes movement started in 2018 by University of Reading climate scientist Ed Hawkins is transferred to public art.

The installation consists of a bar chart made of cotton threads representing the variation of the average annual temperature in Spain from 1921 to 2020. The blue strips represent the years in which the temperature was lower than the average for the period. The red ones reflect the years when it was higher. The more intense the color, the greater the variation with respect to the average temperature.

The action makes visible the relationship between climate change in Spain and health, following the “One Health” approach, which recognizes that the health of people is closely related to the health of animals and our shared environment. This vision, which we could call classical, has gained special relevance in recent years due to the multiple factors that have changed the interactions between people, animals, plants and the environment.

• 1921 - 2020
  • 1921 From 1918 to 1921, the influenza A(H1N1) pandemic, also known as Spanish flu, occurred worldwide, killing between 20 and 50 million people.
  • 1937 - West Nile virus, which causes Nile fever, is isolated for the first time in Uganda.
  • 1945 - “At 8:14 it was a sunny day, at 8:15 it was hell,” Kathleen Sullivan, director of Hibakusha Stories, an organization that collects testimonies from bomb survivors, describes in a Discovery Channel documentary. On August 6 and 9, the United States carried out the only nuclear attack to date on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, resulting in between 50,000 and 100,000 deaths in the former, and between 28,000 and 49,000 in the latter, on the day of the explosion alone. By the end of the year, between 110,000 and 210,000 people had died.
  • 1954 - Description of the chikungunya virus in 1954 in Tanzania.
  • 1957 - The middle class gets the Seat 600
  • 1958 - American scientist Charles Keeling began to record carbon dioxide (CO2) levels in the atmosphere, from which the so-called Keeling Curve was developed.
  • 1970 - In the 1970s, 80% of 7-year-old schoolchildren walk to school.
  • 1976 - The Ebola virus is identified
  • 1985 - Scientist Edward Wilson coins the term biodiversity. According to his calculations, at that time 27,000 species of animals were becoming extinct every year, or 74 per day and no less than three species per hour.
  • 1988 - Deregulation and liberalization begins in the EU, giving airlines the freedom to operate any route, including those within an EU country.
  • 1996 - Avian influenza A(H5N1) virus is detected for the first time in geese in China, passing to humans for the first documented time in 1997, in the midst of an outbreak originating in poultry in Hong Kong
  • 2001 - A terrorist attack occurs in the U.S., using Bacillus anthracis (Anthrax) spores introduced in letters in the mail. This attack caused 17 cases of anthrax and 5 deaths.
  • 2003 - Last sighting of the Yangtze paddlefish (Psephurus gladius), abundant in the basins of China's two major rivers. Overfishing devastated the species, and river fragmentation due to the construction of dams prevented spawning migrations. The species was declared extinct between 2005 and 2010.
  • 2004 - Since this year, the chikungunya virus spreads to more than 60 countries in Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas through the Aedes mosquito.
  • 2005 - The first YouTube video appears. The carbon dioxide emission produced by watching YouTube videos in 2016 alone was approximately 11.13 million tons, the equivalent per year to the greenhouse gas emission of a city like Frankfurt
  • 2007 - The first case of local transmission in Europe, in Italy, of the chikungunya virus is reported.
  • 2007 - Introduction of bluetongue in Spain, an acute viral disease of sheep transmitted by culicoides.
  • 2008 - The first Iphone is released in Spain. In five more years, the Technology and Communication ecosystem (ITC) accounts for almost 10% of global consumption, some 1,500 terawatt hours of energy per year, which is all the electrical energy generated in a year by Germany and Japan combined, and all the electricity used for global lighting in 1985.
  • 2009 - The rodent Melomys rubicola, a large mouse, has gone down in history as the first mammal to become extinct due to anthropogenic climate change. This animal lived exclusively on Bramble Cay, a coral sand cay on the great Australian reef. The species used to feed on vegetation, but increased storms due to climate change have wiped out its only sustenance. In 2009 the last specimen was sighted, and in 2019 the Australian government declared it extinct
  • 2009 - It is shown that, contrary to what was previously believed, adult humans maintain thermogenic adipose tissue, capable of burning fat, with greater presence the lower the body mass index, age and, curiously, the ambient temperature.
  • 2011 - Amazon lands in Spain. The transport of goods by road and air, which continues to grow to the present day, skyrockets.
  • 2012 - Thermogenic adipose tissue is defined as beige fat, whose formation can be induced in response to cold, and its positive effects against obesity and diabetes are demonstrated.
  • 2013 - Ebola epidemic begins in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.
  • 2013 - WHO estimates that there were between 84,000 and 170,000 severe cases and between 29,000 and 60,000 deaths from yellow fever this year. An epidemic of yellow fever and cholera killed nearly 68,000 people in Cadiz alone between 1800 and 1819, including deputies to the Spanish Parliament.
  • 2014 - Comparative studies of different types of diets show that diets low in meat consumption, such as the Mediterranean diet, contribute to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, while reducing the relative risk of suffering from cardiovascular pathologies, type 2 diabetes or cancer.
  • 2014 - The Diabet.es study to analyze cardiovascular risk factors in relation to lifestyles shows an association between ambient temperature and obesity in Spain.
  • 2014 - The first diagnosis of Ebola in Spain by local transmission occurs in the nurse Teresa Romero
  • 2016 - In Spain there is one car for every two inhabitants
  • 2016 - First cases of Crimean Congo in Spain
  • 2018 - On May 22 Edward Hawkins, a scientist at the University of Reading, published his first warming data visualization graph, warming stripes.
  • 2018 - The first case of autochthonous dengue fever occurs in Catalonia, transmitted by the Aedes albopictus (tiger mosquito) mosquito. Circulation of mosquitoes carrying the virus in Spain is proven.
  • 2018 - France experiences worst anthrax outbreak in 20 years in farm animals, with fifty animals dead
  • 2018 - Air pollution is associated with one in nine deaths worldwide, traffic emits up to 80 percent of the ultrafine particles we inhale
  • 2019 - In Spain there is a 73% of population “inactive in their leisure time”, according to a WHO study. Our ancestors spent several hours a day moving at a “low aerobic pace”. They hunted, gathered, explored, migrated and climbed.
  • 2020 - 1.8 million deaths occur due to the SARS-CoV2 pandemic worldwide. In Spain, 50,442 cases were identified, although excess deaths (mostly attributable to COVID) were 77,271.
  • 2020 - West Nile virus killed seven people in Andalusia (four in Seville and three in Cadiz).
  • 2020 - According to WHO, non-communicable diseases (NCDs) kill 41 million people each year, equivalent to 71% of deaths worldwide. Cardiovascular diseases account for the majority of NCD deaths (17.9 million each year), followed by cancer (9.0 million), respiratory diseases (3.9 million) and diabetes (1.6 million).
  • 2030 - If the current trend of obesity growth in Spain continues, it is estimated that by 2030, 80% of men and 55% of women will be overweight or obese, according to a study published by the Spanish Journal of Cardiology.
  • October 2021

Scientists María del Mar Malagón (IMIBIC), Antonio Rivero Juárez (IMIBIC), Miguel Delibes Mateo (IESA-CSIC) and Antonio Rodríguez-Ariza (IMIBIC) have collaborated in this compilation of information and are responsible for the successes, but not the possible errors. Our gratitude.

Authors: Colectivo Nadie (Nieves Galiot Martín, Juan Bolaños Jurado, Rafael Obrero Guisado and Ángel Ramírez Troyano).