Timeline: Earth’s average temperature since the last Ice Age

I teach my multimedia students in the Global Business Journalism Program the importance of using graphics to tell stories. Timelines are one of the most effective narrative storytelling tools. This is one of the best timelines I’ve ever seen. It’s a history of Earth’s average temperature since the last Ice Age glaciation. Scroll to the end for a surprise. (Well, it’ll be a surprise to some of you.)

Thanks to xkcd for creating this ingenious timeline. It is reproduced under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License.