Thursday, February 17, 2022

A stitch in time: University student maps Edmonton's changing climate — on a quilt

Kashmala Fida Mohatarem 
CBC

Working toward a certificate in sustainability, University of Alberta student Emilia Housch spent 60 hours working on a visual demonstration of climate change in Edmonton.


© Submitted by Emilia Housch
Emilia Housch, a University of Alberta grad, created this temperature quilt as her final project to earn a certificate in sustainability.

Her final product: a temperature quilt.

"I wanted to do something cool," Housch told CBC's Edmonton AM on Tuesday.

"Originally, I was going to do an infographic, and then I was like, no that's boring. Temperature quilt time!"

Temperature blankets are crocheted, quilted or knitted records of the temperature throughout a certain time period.

Housch's king-size quilt is checkered with 15 different colour patches from reds, blues to green and yellow, showing daily high and low temperatures for the month of February in Edmonton.

Rows stretching from left to right across the quilt show February in 10-year increments, from 1920 to 2020. The columns — from top to bottom — show each day of the month.

Housch used red to depict the warmest temperatures; the coldest are represented with dark blue.

The lowest temperature she recorded was –36.2 C on Feb. 23, 1940.

The highest was 11.2 C on Feb. 28, 1990.

The graph on Housch's quilt depicts extreme changes in temperatures, addressing a common misconception about how climate change only means a rise in temperatures.

"It's getting warmer, but it's also getting colder," she said.

The quilt shows rows of homogenous colours at the top that become progressively colourful by the bottom.

"The bottom is just very variable and it doesn't seem like the days are connected to each other," Housch said.

She got the idea for the quilt from social media last year.

"I kept seeing people on TikTok making temperature blankets, but they were doing crochet and I thought they looked really cool but I cannot crochet to save my life," she said.

On Facebook, however, she came across temperature quilts and decided to get started.

She expected some pushback when she pitched the idea, but received an incredibly positive response from her superiors.

"Scientifically, I'm happy with it," she said. "It may seem a little crooked, or some of the squares a little different size … but that's the cool thing. Nothing's perfect."

Students interested in studying climate change, food security, renewable energy, biodiversity and social inequality can earn a certificate in sustainability at the U of A.

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