Separated into 30-year periods, Schmidt's presentation of monthly GISS Surface Temperature Analysis data shows how quickly the planet is warming.

(Gavin Schmidt/RealClimate.org)

At a Glance

A new animated image shows the acceleration of global warming in recent decades.Climatologist Gavin Schmidt used surface temperature analysis data from 1881 through 2017 to create the image.

It isn't always easy to visualize the slow march toward dangerous temperatures brought on by climate change, but by analyzing recent history, the picture becomes clearer.

Take, for example, the animated image above, created through climate data analysis by Gavin Schmidt, a climatologist and director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Schmidt pulled GISS Surface Temperature Analysis data from 1881 through June 2017and broke it into 30-year periods, then on Real Climate.

In short, as the years went on, temperature averages got warmer, and those above-average temperatures were being reached more frequently.

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"If it's very tall and narrow, it means that the months were all very similar over that period, while if they aren't, then ," Schmidt told the Huffington Post.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, some of the"stretching" in the image occurred during El Niño patterns, but in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, it's climate change that's to blame, Schmidt told the Huffington Post.

It's logical to believe the graph will continue to trend warmer in the coming years, especially with the continued creep to the right in 2016 and 2017.

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