Arctic sea ice: the data behind the climate change fightback

Climate change scientists have started a fightback against sceptics who argue that the observed changes in the Earth's climate can largely be explained by natural variability. This comes after the email hacking furore . A major Met Office review of more than 100 scientific studies tracking the observed changes in the Earth's climate system finds that it is an "increasingly remote possibility" that human activity is not the main cause of climate change. We visualised this information for the Guardian today - click on the image above to see how we did it. Our graphic uses data, thanks to the UK Met Office Hadley Centre , tracking the extent of Arctic sea ice - a key indicator of global warming - alongside the map of observed temperature changes from a major IPCC report on rising global temperatures . The data for the line graph is below, showing measurements on a number of different models, and predictions for the future. Three of the measurements are 'models' - which show what scienetists think has happened. The fourth, the Hadley centre's HadISST, shows actual measurements. Can you do anything with it? Download the data • DATA: download the full datasheet World government data • Search the world's government data with our gateway Can you do something with this data? Flickr Please post your visualisations and mash-ups on our Flickr group or mail us at [email protected] • Get the A-Z of data • More at the Datastore directory • Follow us on Twitter