On the occasion of World Earth Day 2022, Google evoked the issue of climate change with a time-lapse doodle on its homepage.

The time-lapse showed the changes wrought by climate change over a few decades on four different locations on the planet. The doodle, which is in the form of a gif, was assembled through real-time lapse imagery from Google Earth and photographs from The Ocean Agency.

Each time-lapse tackles a different region and issue and stays for a few hours. One time-lapse shows deforestation in the Harz Forests in Elend, Germany, from 1995 to 2020, caused by bark beetle infestation due to increasing temperatures and severe drought.

Another tackles the visible bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef and its corals near Lizard Island, Australia over a few months in 2016.

Two of the time-lapses portray glacial melting, albeit in two different locations. One shows the retreat of glaciers at the summit of Mt Kilimanjaro, Tanzania from 1986 to 2020, while the other shows reduced ice coverage and melted glaciers in Sermersooq, Greenland from 2000 to 2020.

Clicking the doodle leads to Google results, news and links about climate change. The sidebar lists the United Nations definition of climate change: long-term shifts in temperatures and weather patterns.  

“These shifts may be natural, but since the 1800s, human activities have been the main driver of climate change, primarily due to the burning of fossil fuels (like coal, oil, and gas), which produces heat-trapping gases,” the description reads.

On this page, UNAct Now also lists ways individuals can take steps to better the planet and tackle climate change, urging people to save energy at home, walk, cycle, or take public transport, eat more vegetables, reconsider travel options, reduce food waste, reduce, repair and recycle items, and switch to electric vehicles.

In 2021, the Google doodle took a more positive tone, showing a chain of tree plantations as many little people planted trees and watched them grow in an animation.

Each year, World Earth Day is celebrated on April 22, a tradition that started in 1970. This year’s official theme is ‘invest in our planet.’