Metronome’s Climate Clock (2020) by Gan Golan and Andrew Boyd

  • Metronome’s Climate Clock (image above) is a public art installation displaying the time left until it is too late to reverse the effects of global warming at our current rate of emissions. In September 2020, Metronome’s digital clock in Manhattan, New York, USA began to count down 7 years, 103 days, 15 hours, 40 minutes, and 7 seconds, until the year 2028. Metronome’s Climate Clock has been described by news reporters as “a modern-day hourglass.” The 62-foot (19-meter) wide clock was originally installed in Union Square, NYC in 1999. The 2020 repurposing of the installation was the first time in over two decades that the digital clock was reprogrammed to raise awareness for climate change.
    • In April 2021, the climate clock was updated to display the percentage of the world’s energy that is produced by renewable sources. In 2021, this number was around 12.2%, and included solar, wind, hydroelectric, biofuel, and geothermal energy. 

Photograph of Metronome’s Climate Clock, soon after it began counting down. The art piece, which was activated in September 2020, is counting down until the effects of climate change become irreversible if humanity stays on the  current track of carbon emission (from Hassan, 2020).

  • The creators of Metronome’s Climate Clock are Gan Golan, an American author, artist, and activist, and Andrew Boyd, an American author and campaigner for social justice (image below). Both authors have extensive experience in advocating for social change on a multitude of issues, but this was the first time they have created an art piece to showcase the urgency of climate change to the public. They had previously designed a handheld climate clock for Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg in 2019. 
    • Golan and Boyd were inspired to design Metronome’s Climate Clock by similar projects like the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Doomsday Clock at the University of Chicago (Illinois, USA), which symbolizes the proximity to a man-made global disaster by how close the clock is to midnight. The Doomsday Clock has also stressed the danger of climate change by shifting to 90 seconds away from midnight in 2023, the closest it has been since its creation in 1947.
  • In conjunction with their art display, Golan and Boyd have also created a website called Climate Clock to further educate people on the science, politics, and social aspects of climate change. The website also provides resources to help people cope with and take action against climate change.

Photograph of Andrew Boyd and Gan Golan, the artists behind Metronome’s Climate Clock (from Moynihan, 2020).

How is this related to climate?

  • The climate clock’s countdown measures the time left until it is too late to reverse our planet’s rate of warming. According to the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change in Berlin, the world has until 2028 to reverse this trend by drastically cutting our carbon emissions to zero. If the world reaches net zero emissions by then, there is a two-thirds chance that global warming will be limited to less than 1.5°C (2.7°F) from what it was before the Industrial Revolution.
  • If the planet’s average temperature rises above 1.5°C, the Earth’s climate will exceed certain tipping points, key thresholds identified by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that will lead to irreversible changes. These tipping points are interconnected, meaning that if one threshold is surpassed, it will likely lead to the crossing of another (image below).

Diagram of the nine tipping points identified by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), all of which are more likely to occur if the global temperature exceeds 1.5°C (2.7°F) over pre-Industrial levels. The tipping points are interlinked, represented by arrows, meaning that the occurrence of one event contributes to another (from Igini, 2024).

  • For example, the melting of the Greenland ice sheet (tipping point G in the diagram above) is one critical tipping point. This area of the Arctic is warming over three times faster than other parts of the world. Furthermore, the Greenland ice melt is a positive reinforcing cycle. Ice reflects solar energy due to its bright color, a phenomenon known as albedo. The more ice that melts, the more energy is absorbed by the darker exposed surface below the ice, quickly melting any nearby ice remaining. The meltwater produced by the Greenland ice sheet is greatly contributing to sea level rise and the weakening of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) (tipping point C in the diagram above), another IPCC turning point.
    • The AMOC is a temperature and density-driven system of ocean currents spanning the Atlantic Ocean. This conveyor belt-like system regulates temperature by circulating warm water from the tropics of the southern Atlantic Ocean to the cold waters in the Arctic near Greenland. This current is slowing down, partly due to the melting of the Greenland ice sheet. The rapid influx of freshwater, which is less dense than saltwater, is disrupting the differences in water density that fuel the AMOC. According to the IPCC, if the AMOC slows down, climate patterns around the world will change. The summer monsoon in Asia would grow weaker, precipitation in the Sahel (the area south of the Sahara desert in Africa) would decrease, and temperatures in Europe would drop.

References and additional resources

How to cite this page

Metronome’s Climate Clock (2020) by Gan Golan and Andrew Boyd. (2025, January 31). Climate in Global Cultures and Histories: Promoting Climate Literacy Across Disciplines. Retrieved Month Date, Year, from https://www.science.smith.edu/climatelit/metronomes-climate-clock-2020-by-gan-golan-and-andrew-boyd/.