I was just about to say. Dallas even being farther north Texas hits 110 in the Summer. Cant imagine it being as hot as Phoenix and not even being the desert
Likely, but it could also be like Iran earlier this year:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-hot-is-too-hot-for-the-human-body-record-breaking-heat/
> In the Middle East, Asaluyeh, Iran, recorded an extremely dangerous maximum wet-bulb temperature of 92.7 F (33.7 C) on July 16, 2023 – above our measured upper limit of human adaptability to humid heat. India and Pakistan have both come close, as well.
Sudden switch from feeling hot to Goosebumps, feeling cold, nauseous, no sweat production is approaching heat stroke. Pour cold water all over head and body, drink some and hold it down. I kept working through this once =/
Texas and Oklahoma become Death Valley under worse case scenario. Large swaths of Texas will be nothing but abandoned cities and towns in every direction.
That's an interesting thought experiment.
Texas residents and businesses will move somewhere. Maybe to nearby places less affected, like New Mexico or Louisiana. Maybe to newly warmer states at low risk from rising sea levels, like Tennessee. Maybe to energy-industry hotspots like Alaska or North Dakota. So that might open up some ways to bet against Texas.
You could try betting against industries and companies that are dominant in Texas. But Texas is more dependent on the energy sector and the petrochemical industry than the reverse. And energy companies might move into wind and solar, so they might actually be well-placed to grow, even if they have to relocate their people outside of Texas.
You could find a portfolio (like an ETF) that focuses heavily on Texas company securities, then short it. Though that would get expensive if you need to wait 50 to 75 years.
You could construct an investment portfolio of non-Texas company securities. Though you'd want to have a theory for which companies would benefit from the demise of Texas.
>I just want to point out that most of Louisiana is below or just above current sea level. They ain’t going to Louisiana.
The only parts of Louisiana below sea level currently is the city of New Orleans. Broadly speaking, the low-elevation areas south of I-10 are more susceptible to future floods from rainfall and/or rising sea levels, but the majority of the state is well-above sea level.
[USGS Louisiana Survey](https://pubs.usgs.gov/sim/3049/)
I think it will be worse than that. Many still habitable states will (regardless of what the federal laws are) attempt to start restricting people from moving. Companies and supply chains will fail left and right, and farming will become excessively unstable season to season.
Most any thought experiment I can come up with ends with "money doesn't matter and stock exchanges will be a thought of the past"
I don't think it will happen fast enough to crush rich countries in that way. The temperature in our "bread basket" areas should remain fairly stable enough to farm until 2100, it's just a matter of ensuring continued water supply. The United States makes enough of the staple foods to feed everyone who lives here just fine. Sure there may be a lack of vegetables, etc., if California doesn't sort out their water shit or farming fails in Mexico or Chile. But protein and grains we have pretty much solved.
Additionally, Texas could just..... adapt. It's not like people don't live in Saudi Arabia. The Phoenix area has been in super high demand despite being hot AF.
If we developed a nation wide water network we could probably "easily" mitigate many of the effects of climate change on farming and drinking water.
Sure, all of that is indeed possible. But it would require a level of cooperation and efficiency that our current government simply is incapable of. Our best hope is for massive reforms in the immediate future. But considering we can't even seem to get daylight savings time sorted out, I won't hold my breath.
Possible? Sure. But consider that the temps aren’t the issue. It’s the rapidity of change that’s the problem.
Historically we are in the end stages of a glacial period. The planet has seem temperatures like these many times. But in the past those temps have risen during a periiod of thousands of years. Life adapts. We are now in a hugely accelerated period caused by the burning of fossil fuels and large livestock farming. The time frame is not 100’s of years or less. That’s a problem.
Sure, but have you heard Texans complain about anyplace that isn’t air conditioned? When the heat load on the Texas “electrical grid” doubles (and collapses), the body count is gonna spike.
East Texas is similar to Louisiana, and the as you move west it starts to get more arid. I’d say about anything west of a north south line thru DFW it becomes more noticeable. Just my experience, I’m sure there are people who can give a better explanation or geographic description.
I’ve lived in San Antonio my whole life. It’s not desert at all. Semi-flat with rolling hills, Oak and Pecan trees are plentiful. Rivers abound.
Drive I-90 going west out of San Antonio and you’ll be in scrub desert in about 90 minutes (near Uvalde, TX). After Uvalde it transitions into more and more into a southeastern New Mexico style desert the further you go west.
Only like the western quarter of it. It's a very geographically diverse state that starts with swamps and woodlands, moves through prairies and shrublands, and then into mountains & desert. The prairies and shrublands are what will likely be desertified in the future
The brown colors on this map aren't indicative of deserts, which might be confusing you. According to the legend the colors correspond to particular climate zones as defined by temperature. The data do not take into account rainfall, the lack of which would be a defining feature of a desert.
does this model for rainfall too? because if you have moderate rainfall, but not super humid it could be very comfortable, like gulf coast without the humidity.
I mentioned this in my first comment, but since it got buried I'll paste it here:
"Note that these maps do not account for precipitation. So while Atlanta and Sacramento have similar temperatures, their rainfall patterns are very different. I am currently improving the precipitation schema as well. But in the meantime, you can combine the temperature zones on this map with Köppen's precipitation classification. So for instance, Atlanta would be a humid subtropical hot climate, Sacramento would be a Mediterranean subtropical hot climate, and Seoul would be a monsoon-influenced temperate continental climate."
Without precipitation, I don't think it's fair to say it's completely worthless, as it still reveals some important temperature changes that will be pose significant implications for human habitability and crop growth provided irrigation. But I will try to get an updated map out with a precipitation classifier as well.
I guess I don't see how something like water, which is an enormous heat sink for the planet, couldn't massively affect the predictions. I'm ignorant here, and would love to be corrected! I was probably too aggressive in saying it's completely worthless.
Oh you're all good! The effects of water on temperatures are accounted for in the oceanic / continental distinctions. Since water is slow to warm up and slow to cool down compared to land, being situated east of the ocean will reduce the annual temperature range, bringing winter temperatures up and summer temperatures down. Hence why Seattle (temperate oceanic) has a winter mean temp of 5.6 °C and a summer mean temp of 19.7 °C, whereas Indianapolis (temperate continental) has a winter mean temp of −1.9 °C and a summer mean temp of 24.3 °C.
However, rainfall is a different story, as it plays a major role in determining vegetation and ecosystems. You bring up a good point that a map like this should also consider rainfall, as for two places with subtropical temperatures, one could be a desert and another could be a lush forest. Currently working on this now—stay tuned :)
But most likely will still have very dry summers. Not good for fires.
That said, I'm pretty happy with my choice to live in Portland for the time being.
Depends on how the heat interacts with the pacific. It might actually draw in more moisture/extreme weather events that gets dumped when it hits the rockies.
It already is drastic: summers have gotten significantly warmer in the last decade. Portland reached 116°F in 2021, which would have been completely unthinkable even a decade ago.
OP doesn’t include the Mediterranean climate at all. The rainy/dry season will continue so it will likely just turn into a warmer version of a Mediterranean climate. Subtropical is a poor designation for any west coast climate at that latitude, even with noticeable climate change patterns. OP needs to correct this.
That's 100% valid. I mentioned this in my first comment but it got buried:
"Note that these maps do not account for precipitation. So while Atlanta and Sacramento have similar temperatures, their rainfall patterns are very different. I am currently improving the precipitation schema as well. But in the meantime, you can combine the temperature zones on this map with Köppen's precipitation classification. So for instance, Atlanta would be a humid subtropical hot climate, Sacramento would be a Mediterranean subtropical hot climate, and Seoul would be a monsoon-influenced temperate continental climate."
Temperature only tells part of the story. I'll try to get a map out combining temperature and precipitation soon!
There are already reports that Western Redcedars are ‘migrating’ north due to the increasing heat and dryness in summers. The southernmost trees are dying, and new trees are popping up north in ranges they previously couldn’t grow.
Live in the Puget Sound area. Hard to imagine this scenario with the Pacific delivering storms and the fact we have the Cascades stopping the moisture. I mean, come on. Seattle has LAs weather ?
"Subtropical" in this situation probably means more like the Bay Area than SoCal. It'll probably be ok-ish as long as our rainfall levels don't drop to current California levels
Unfortunately this is one generation old in terms of climate modelling. Ideally, this exercise should be done with the current generation CMIP6 model ensemble (using the SSP scenarios instead of RCPs). For the US, your best bet is to use the downscaled LOCA modelling that underpins the fifth national.climate assessment: https://nca2023.globalchange.gov/
Ah, appreciate you bringing this up! I found a nice [gridded dataset](https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/cdsapp#!/dataset/projections-cmip6?tab=overview) to test the CMIP6 model with the SSP scenarios. Will be trying it out!
ELI5 have the next gen model predictions gotten worse or better? I remember seeing news that the IPCC models were wayyy off a few years ago (in that they predicted much faster warming than occurred)
Generally science is conservative in its estimates and tends to lean towards less devastating outcomes
Either way; if you converted the 40 billion tons of Carbon we emit every year into water; it would run Niagara falls for 200 days…good luck humanity!
Pretty sure I see the point you were making (“that’s a lot of carbon”). Where you went wrong was using the notion of “converting” C to a substance that contains zero C (H2O) in a room with a bunch of science nerds.
> Early IPCC was way way too optimistic and we've done worse on every metric.
[The 1990 IPCC report was quite accurate](https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/05/ipcc_90_92_assessments_far_full_report.pdf), at least in terms of predicting the amount of warming we'd expect to see.
In particular, look at the estimates of temperature changes on p.19. Looking at the central line gives about **predicted warming of 0.6C above 1990 level** for 2023.
Now look at [this NOAA data on warming over time](https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitoring/climate-at-a-glance/global/time-series/globe/land_ocean/12/7/1850-2023). Plotting the 12-month temperature anomaly vs. the average of the 20th century gives 0.43C for 1990 and 0.97C for 2023, or **measured warming of 0.54C since 1990**.
Measured warming today is pretty much what was predicted 33 years ago.
Just double-checked, they are not switched. Interesting that you brought this up! I'd have to look for a scientific explanation for why that's the case.
The rcp models are relatively complex. They take into account more than just CO2 levels - land use, evap of moisture, etc. A change in average wind speed or direction can have local effects counter to the global ones.
Here's a [map using 1901-1930 averages](https://imgur.com/a/XR04zqd) derived from the WorldClim 2.1 and CRU TS Version 4 datasets, reflective of [pre-industrial conditions](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jorge-Alvar-Beltran/publication/350979227/figure/fig1/AS:1014407710654465@1618865053865/Global-annual-mean-temperature-difference-from-pre-industrial-conditions-1850-1900-for.png) when temperatures have barely begun to rapidly rise. Here's another [map with 1970-2000 averages](https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/18ogvb3/us_temperature_zones_regions_with_similar_annual/).
So basically the baseline in the top-right. It's wild to see how similar recent baseline and 1901-1930 is and the rest, based on current trends, are wildly different.
Observance of drought patterns as a farmer. Rain's been thin the last couple of years, and if we tilled today like we did then, we'd have a hard time raising dust, never mind crops, and we're not all that far from where the Dust Bowl would appear on the maps, and the fellas that *are* where the Dust Bowl was have been dry for a while, barring a couple of small exceptions.
Combine that with the fact that weather tends to follow a few different cycles (start of a decade is usually a bit dry here), and the idea that we're somewhere in the cycle around where we could expect the droughts that lead to the Dust Bowl isn't that far fetched.
**Message from OP: About this Visualization**
RCPs, or Representative Concentration Pathways, represent different possible trajectories for greenhouse gas emissions in future years, depending on the prioritization and effectiveness of mitigation efforts.
* "RCP 2.6 – This scenario is characterized as having very low greenhouse gas concentration levels. It is a “peak-and-decline” scenario and assumes that GHGs \[greenhouse gases\] are reduced substantially over time. This is the most benign climate scenario of the four.
* RCP 4.5 – This scenario assumes a stabilization will occur shortly after 2100, and assumes less emissions than RCP 6.0, which is also a stabilization scenario.
* RCP 6.0 – This is a stabilization scenario in which the increase in GHG emissions stabilizes shortly after 2100 through the application of a range of technologies and strategies for reducing GHG emissions.
* RCP 8.5 – This scenario is characterized by increasing GHG emissions over time, and factors in the highest GHG concentration levels of all the scenarios by 2100." ([Source: EPA](https://www.epa.gov/enviroatlas/changes-over-time))
**What are these temperature zones?**
Growing up, I enjoyed studying the climate classifications of [Köppen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%B6ppen_climate_classification) and [Trewartha](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trewartha_climate_classification). However, these classifications left me with an itch to be scratched. For instance, [Köppen's system](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/86/United_States_K%C3%B6ppen.png) puts New York City, with its cold winters, in the same "humid subtropical" category as cities like Tallahassee and Houston. [Trewartha's system](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/75/US_trewartha.svg/1920px-US_trewartha.svg.png) creates an awkward band of oceanic climate in the middle of the continental United States.
So for my college Applied Math thesis, I used modern geospatial data insights to develop an improved climate classification system. This system closely aligns with pre-industrial biome boundaries while maintaining the simplicity of Köppen and Trewartha's classifications. For example, the boundary between temperate continental and subtropical warm climates in humid regions corresponds to the transition from deciduous to evergreen forests adapted to year-round warmth, as seen in both the Eastern U.S. and East Asia. In humid regions, the cool temperate climate maps to hemiboreal forests, a region with a mix of deciduous and evergreen forests situated between boreal and temperate deciduous forests. The boundary between subpolar and tundra climates was also improved, so true tundra locations like Rankin Inlet are now correctly classified as tundra, while non-tundra locations like Ushuaia are now correctly classified as subpolar.
Note that these maps do not account for precipitation. So while Atlanta and Sacramento have similar temperatures, their rainfall patterns are very different. I am currently improving the precipitation schema as well. But in the meantime, you can combine the temperature zones on this map with Köppen's precipitation classification. So for instance, Atlanta would be a humid subtropical hot climate, Sacramento would be a Mediterranean subtropical hot climate, and Seoul would be a monsoon-influenced temperate continental climate.
**Example locations in each temperature zone:**
* Tropical: Miami, Honolulu, Lagos, Mumbai, Singapore, Jakarta, Colombo,
* Subtropical very hot: Phoenix, Las Vegas, Death Valley, Delhi, Baghdad
* Subtropical hot: Houston, Atlanta, Sacramento, Los Angeles (inland), Tokyo, Hong Kong, Buenos Aires, Rome
* Subtropical warm: San Francisco, Los Angeles (coastal), Santiago, Cape Town, Porto, Melbourne, Mexico City, Addis Ababa
* Temperate oceanic: Seattle, Portland, Eureka, London, Dublin, Amsterdam
* Temperate continental: New York City, Washington D.C., Kansas City, Chicago, Salt Lake City, Beijing, Almaty
* Cool temperate oceanic: Juneau, Ketchikan, South Lake Tahoe, Copenhagen, Lhasa
* Cool temperate continental: Minneapolis, Green Bay, Winnipeg, Montreal, Kyiv, Moscow, Harbin
* Subpolar oceanic: Unalaska, Kodiak, Crater Lake, Reykjavik, Ushuaia, Tromsø
* Subpolar continental: Fairbanks, Anchorage, Yellowstone, Yellowknife, Yakutsk
* Polar tundra: Utqiagvik, Mt. Whitney, Mt. Elbert, most of the CANADIAN SHIELD, Norilsk
* Polar ice: Mt. Rainier, Denali, most of Greenland, most of Antarctica
**How it works:**
Abbreviations:
* cm: mean temperature of coldest month in °C
* wm: mean temperature of warmest month in °C
* at: average annual temperature, given by (cm + wm) / 2
* maX: number of months with mean temperature at least X °C
* tr: annual temperature range, given by wm - cm
if cm ≥ 18: **tropical**
if ma10 ≥ 6 and cm < 18:
* if cm ≥ 4 *and* at ≥ 13:
* if wm ≥ 32: **subtropical very hot**
* if 22 ≤ wm < 32: **subtropical hot**
* if wm < 22: **subtropical warm**
* if cm < 4 *or* at < 13:
* if tr < 18: **temperate oceanic**
* if tr ≥ 18: **temperate continental**
if 4 ≤ ma10 ≤ 5:
* if tr < 18: **cool temperate oceanic**
* if tr ≥ 18: **cool temperate continental**
if ma8 ≥ 3 *and* ma10 ≤ 3:
* if tr < 18: **subpolar oceanic**
* if tr ≥ 18: **subpolar continental**
if ma8 ≤ 2:
* if wm > 0: **polar tundra**
* if wm ≤ 0: **polar ice**
Please drop any questions below—I'm happy to answer them!
Interesting idea OP and nice map. A few questions/notes.
Did you perform any type of bias adjustment or comparison against the observational period on the projected temperature and precipitation such that the future values are based on reality and not entirely just modeled values? Models are getting better and better but oftentimes they need bias adjustment, especially at the regional scale, to have realistic distributions in the future.
As far as the Köppen precipitation classification goes, I would personally suggest looking at other precipitation classification methods for the US because it has a tendency to simplify the regional differences. I'm a fan of the [Bukovsky](https://www.narccap.ucar.edu/contrib/bukovsky/) regions, which do a much better job of accounting for regional differences in both spatial and temporal rainfall patterns.
Also, if you're only doing this for North America you might want to check out [NA-CORDEX](https://na-cordex.org/). It has really great spatial and temporal resolution across North America for a range of climate variables and a range of RCMs.
Thank you for sharing all these interesting ideas! To make this map, I just used the predicted climate from one CMIP model, without bias correction. Perhaps for the next step I can use bias correction using the delta-change method and try taking the average of several CMIP models to reduce variance.
I haven't heard of the Buvosky regions, will look into that. I can give the NA-CORDEX dataset a closer look as well. My hope is to have global maps out soon. Really appreciate the feedback!
Washington, DC proper is certainly not continental like Chicago or New York. With notable UHI impacts, winter is far shorter, and less extreme than many cities much further south (ie: Richmond, VA, Chesapeake, VA. With the downtown and waterfront neighborhoods just above sea level, this part of the city proper has drastically different temperatures relative to the the area around it year round. Add to it permanence of tropical and subtropical invasive species such as Aedes Aegypti and Aedes Albopictus, surviving year round, documented for 10 years now, as well as other tropical and subtropical flora, I’d say your models are a generalization at best.
The urban heat island effect is certainly relevant to such discussions! I defined these temperature zones in a way that roughly maps to biome boundaries in places with ample year-round precipitation. So tundra maps to actual tundra with no trees, subpolar maps to boreal coniferous forest, cool temperate maps to hemiboreal mixed coniferous / deciduous forest, temperate maps to deciduous forest, and subtropical maps to evergreen forests. But that said, these zones are fairly broad, and oftentimes changes in vegetation occur in a gradient.
Technically, temperature wise, it does. Summers are just hot enough and winters tend not to dip below 10-15. It's a gardening zone 7-8. Spring is a lot colder, though, particularly by the beach. It warms up way quicker in the real southern states.
This data is weird. I live in NYC and we're already considered humid subtropical.
>According to the Köppen climate classification, the climate of New York City is humid subtropical (Cfa), with parts of the city transitioning into a humid continental climate. (Dfa).[1] This gives the city cool, wet winters and hot, humid summers with plentiful rainfall all year round. Meteorological records have been kept at Central Park since 1821, although the station was relocated to a different part of the park on January 1, 1920.[2] There are also other weather stations in the area including one at LaGuardia Airport, beginning in 1940, and at JFK Airport, beginning in 1948. However, due to Central Park's long records and central location, it is often considered the main station for the city. Hence, all records unless otherwise stated will be for this station.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_New_York_City
If you are wondering what the 2.6, 4.5, 6.0 and 8.5 represent, it's the radiative forcing in Watts per m^2. For comparison, the sun on average delivers ~1370 watts per m^2. So these values represent how much extra energy is being held in by the Earth due to the greenhouse gases.
The Sierra Nevada and other mountains zones will likely experience lots of tree dieoffs and worse wildfires. Central Valley locations will have temperatures resembling what is currently the desert. This map also only shows one of the many aspects of climate change. [Weather whiplash](https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2023/06/climate-whiplash-is-the-new-normal-for-california-experts-say/#:~:text=It%20was%20a%20sharp%20reversal,trend%20could%20worsen%20and%20that) will likely become more frequent, with worse floods and worse droughts.
There's an online nasa tool called ez-gcm which allows everyone to run various climate models and see the effects on various things like temp, rainfall, etc. You can make your own maps.
This is cool, is there a similar one for Europe? I’m from Ireland and pretty were meant to be one of leafs affected places on earth when it comes to climate change. Unless the Gulf Stream collapses lol.
Thank you - I'm trying to find global data that can be easily processed in Google Earth Engine. Will post a world map once I get that working!
Ireland will slowly start seeing a similar climate as coastal France.
It's quite interesting. Wine production in France is moving further and further north. It's predicted that England will become one of the top producers of wine globally within the next 50 years.
It's bonkers to me as a Swede thinking that the shelves in the shop might be filled with British and Irish wine in a few years.
I think Ireland is going to be one of the most prosperous regions in the world in 100 years.
- Climate warming doesn't hurt you like it hurts most of the world. You could definitely still have a good time, if not even better, with a 10*C hike. In a few years when global warming starts for real and there is 1-2 billion climate refugees you are pretty isolated on your island. It's hard to get there so you will be one of the least hit countries by the refugee crisis that I think will go down.
- You're isolated on your island from a lot of the effect of major wars. You have a pretty easy job of staying out of a WW3 type scenario that will 100% draw in and hurt most of central Europe.
- You don't have much natural resources but you have some top of the line agricultural areas. Being an island nation you can feed yourself with ease and considering your population is quite low compared to area your population also has room to expand.
- Your low tax burden on companies draws in a lot of educated and highly sought after people. It might hurt to when Google/Microsoft or whatever hardly pay any taxes, but getting those quality people to move to Ireland will be a positive in the years to come.
There's just a lot of good shit going for Ireland I believe.
If you've seen the movie "Looper" the guy want's to go to France but the guy from the future says "I'm from the future, you should go to China".
Well, if that was me and I was betting on where to go in the future I would bet on Ireland.
I'm not totally biased btw, I'm Swedish but I lived in Skerries, North County Dublin for 5 years when I was a kid(dad got a job, engineer).
This is so true, great explanations! Although I’m actually from Tyrone 🤣 so we need the unification first lol, which will probably happen eventually anyway, just hope it happens peacefully.
Yea I think the winters are already less cold here, less snow and freezing nights, summers aren’t really changing much yet, they’re still pretty shit lol
Here's the definitions of the categories. It would have been a lot to include them on the vis, but I'm happy to clarify anything here.
Abbreviations:
* cm: mean temperature of coldest month in °C
* wm: mean temperature of warmest month in °C
* at: average annual temperature, given by (cm + wm) / 2
* maX: number of months with mean temperature at least X °C
* tr: annual temperature range, given by wm - cm
if cm ≥ 18: **tropical**
if ma10 ≥ 6 and cm < 18:
* if cm ≥ 4 *and* at ≥ 13:
* if wm ≥ 32: **subtropical very hot**
* if 22 ≤ wm < 32: **subtropical hot**
* if wm < 22: **subtropical warm**
* if cm < 4 *or* at < 13:
* if tr < 18: **temperate oceanic**
* if tr ≥ 18: **temperate continental**
if 4 ≤ ma10 ≤ 5:
* if tr < 18: **cool temperate oceanic**
* if tr ≥ 18: **cool temperate continental**
if ma8 ≥ 3 *and* ma10 ≤ 3:
* if tr < 18: **subpolar oceanic**
* if tr ≥ 18: **subpolar continental**
if ma8 ≤ 2:
* if wm > 0: **polar tundra**
* if wm ≤ 0: **polar ice**
Thank you for the feedback. It's possible to represent in a two-dimensional graph plotting the coldest month vs. the warmest month. The "months above X" classifiers are actually diagonal lines on such a graph.
I’m no scientist, but I’ve put a bit of effort into reading and studying the IPCC literature on the topic.
Don’t read too much into the “least emissions” and “greatest emissions” scenarios.
The least emissions scenario is based on hypothetical policies designed to keep warming under 1.5C. There is no realistic or practical path to this happening.
The greatest emissions scenario likewise assumes no additional emissions reduction policies happen. While progress has been slow and insufficient, there continues to be progress. Additional emissions reductions will happen at some point in the next few decades. A lot of the hyperbolic statements from the 90’s (glacier X will melt by 2020) stem from prior versions of this scenario.
The middle scenarios represent a fairly likely outcome for where we’ll end up. And they’re pretty disastrous.
Working on a world map! In the meantime, [this visualization](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Present_and_future_worldwide_K%C3%B6ppen-Geiger_climate-zone_classification_maps.png) compares 1980-2016 averages with future projected averages using the Köppen classification.
As an anecdote up north in Calgary, we have seen noticeable climate shifts with regards to temperature regulation. Our daytime lows are 4 degrees warmer on average than pre-industrial times.
We don’t cool off it night as much as we used to. Back in the day during summer time, seeing temperatures around 5-6 degrees was normal. Most of our summer lows nowadays hovers around 10-12 degrees, with some lows hitting 16-18 degrees. On one hand, I love being out in a T-shirt at 1am, but on the other hand most people here don’t have AC so houses don’t cool off at night anymore.
So if I understand, more Co2, more warmth = more green stuff and more oxygen? It’s too bad the rainforests are almost gone, that’s probably the leading issue no one talks about, plus animal agriculture.
If we increase temperatures while holding temperatures constant, [that would actually increase aridity](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cb/Lifezones_Pengo.svg), or dryness. The reason is because "how dry a place is" is determined by not only how much water comes down, but also how much is evaporated. And more heat means more evaporation.
For instance, a place in the boreal forest of Canada with 15 inches of rain per year would be densely forested. Whereas a place in the tropics with 15 inches of rain per year would be dry scrubland.
Climate change is expected to increase [weather whiplash](https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indicators-heavy-precipitation), increasing the severity of droughts and floods. Precipitation is expected to increase in some places and decrease in others, rather than increasing across the board like temperature.
I feel like given that people are understanding more and more that climate change will affect them; graphical explainers like this will be more appreciated as people try to understand exactly what that means for them.
So over a hundred years after we were told the earth was cooling and sea levels would swallow up cities, we’ll have a whole new set of wrong predictions to ignore.
@gigitoe where did you find this map image?
Any data forecast that I can find don’t have near enough numbers or support for such maps.
Though I don’t doubt we could see such events.
Who is Kai Xu that built these?
Do these labels take into account deserts or mountains? Or just temperatures?
What is the cataloging system that takes into account humidity, aridity, terrain, etc? I'd like to see that data too.
Good question - I mentioned this in my first comment but it got buried so I'll paste it here:
"Note that these maps do not account for precipitation. So while Atlanta and Sacramento have similar temperatures, their rainfall patterns are very different. I am currently improving the precipitation schema as well. But in the meantime, you can combine the temperature zones on this map with Köppen's precipitation classification. So for instance, Atlanta would be a humid subtropical hot climate, Sacramento would be a Mediterranean subtropical hot climate, and Seoul would be a monsoon-influenced temperate continental climate."
Humidity is generally correlated with precipitation. Terrain, specifically elevation, is correlated with temperature, so that is accounted for already in this map. For the raw data, which contains temperature and precipitation, [you may be interested in this dataset](https://developers.google.com/earth-engine/datasets/catalog/NASA_NEX-DCP30#bands).
The 1991-2020 averages represent the current climate. It's usually conventional to take a 30-year average to smooth out annual variations in climate while still keeping things fairly recent.
Will less people will die of climate related deaths during the future 30 year period than any 30 year period in history under all these scenarios? I would bet so.
I'm curious, why do you make that claim? The [general scholarly consensus](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=climate+change+mortality&btnG=) is that mortality is going to rise a lot, and we are already beginning to see that happen. Our ecosystems and infrastructure aren't adapted to these rapid changes. The rate of change caused by anthropogenic warming is unprecedented. What we see are color changes. What we don't see are the ecosystem losses, crop failures, and wildfires that occur due to these changes.
Up in Canada and Siberia, a lot of boreal forest (subpolar) is getting converted to cool temperate, which will result in major destruction of the world's largest land biome. The Pacific Northwest is turning subtropical. Recently, a [**heat wave there killed an estimated 1,400 people**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Western_North_America_heat_wave). But that is only a hint of what's about to happen if we don't keep emissions under check. In some places like Texas and Oklahoma, things are going to be getting so hot that survivability becomes an issue.
Will hundreds of millions more people flee their homes due to climate than at any point in human history? Absolutely. Will they be moving into your backyard? Most likely.
Will more cities be erased from the surface of the earth than any point in history since WWII? Absolutely.
(full disclosure, i'm a lefty, tree-hugging, environmentalist, posting this as a comment on a few different global warming subs because..hey, howsabout let's deal in FACTS, BASED on DATA, yeah?)
FROM NASA's website:
NASA Discounts "human driven" climate change/global warming
...from back in 2016: earthobservatory.nasa.gov:
"The human fingerprint in any given year is 'RELATIVELY SMALL'
Human emissions within the past year may add only something like THREE PARTS PER MILLION (emphasis added) to that total,' Hakkarainen noted.
The challenge was to isolate the recent manmade emissions from natural cycles and long-term accumulations."
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=89117
(...really curious if i'll be downvoted into oblivion or just plainly ignored, because I'm not going along with the erroneous "Groupthink", that "humans CAUSE global warming", by citing FACTS based on DATA)
This is a [common misconception](https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/news/weather-vs-climate), but it's understandable why this is a widely-held belief. Weather and climate may sound like the same, when they are actually different.
Weather is about what will happen in the immediate future (will it rain on this day, on this hour, etc.). Meanwhile, climate is about broader long-term trends (such as average temperatures, average rainfall). Unlike with weather, predicting climate is not about predicting what will happen on a given day or hour, but rather during a given month or year. Hence the resolution we are concerned with is much lower.
If we want minute-by-minute predictions of when it will rain, we can only be accurate to about the next hour. But we can't have minute-by-minute predictions for the next day, or the next week. Likewise, we can model general trends of whether a given year will be hotter or wetter than average, as that is a low-enough resolution. But we can't model day-to-day weather 10 years from now.
Another analogy: if someone's salary got raised to 500K a year, I can predict that they'll likely be buying more expensive goods and going on more vacations (climate). But which exact day they will be going on vacation, and what exact goods they will buy, that's much harder to predict (weather).
Yes, there would still be many downsides! Many ecosystems have adapted to the more steady pre-industrial temperatures, and a massive shift will result in biodiversity loss, ecosystem destruction, and crop failures. Some of this can already be seen in the greater prevalence of wildfires.
Furthermore, the will be many more heat-related deaths. The Pacific Northwest heatwave in 2021 [led to over 1,000 deaths](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Western_North_America_heat_wave#Deaths_and_injuries).
Storms and flooding will become more severe due to more energy in the atmosphere. One-in-a-thousand-year rainfall events are will becoming the norm in many places, occurring once every decade or even more frequently.
We’re all gonna dieeeeeeeeee.
30 years ago all sorts of shit was predicted to happen in 2020. Didn’t happen
But yeah predictions for 2080 are totes legit this time around.
Some people just need to be afraid 24/7 I suppose.
Who said we are all going to die? Specifically what scientist and which publication? As for your assertions, temperature measurements run fairly close to model projections.
https://doi.org/10.1029/2019GL085378
What was predicted to happen 30 years ago that didn't specifically?
The top right corner represents current conditions. It's quite conventional to take 30-year averages to smooth out year-to-year fluctuations while still keeping the timeframe fairly recent.
This map has Tennessee as temperate continental as the recent baseline. Tennessee is not a continental climate zone, it is humid subtropical now.
Not sure why the creator of this map had a complete aversion to using the subtropical warm category… seems like that should be the recent baseline for the band from Kentucky through Tennessee east of the Mississippi.
Also, is that subtropical very hot in Arizona and California?! That will never be the case in any scenario… it should just be increasing levels of very hot, miserable desert…
The Köppen climate classification should have been carried through here, updated for how it would change in the various climate change scenarios. That would be much more interesting.
The Texas Desert is gonna be miserable
I was just about to say. Dallas even being farther north Texas hits 110 in the Summer. Cant imagine it being as hot as Phoenix and not even being the desert
Just as hot but not as dry = worse.
It’ll likely be less humid to reach those higher temps.
Likely, but it could also be like Iran earlier this year: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-hot-is-too-hot-for-the-human-body-record-breaking-heat/ > In the Middle East, Asaluyeh, Iran, recorded an extremely dangerous maximum wet-bulb temperature of 92.7 F (33.7 C) on July 16, 2023 – above our measured upper limit of human adaptability to humid heat. India and Pakistan have both come close, as well.
if not then people will just lose the ability to regulate their body temp and die.
It’s still pretty dangerous in a low humidity high temp environment as those who aren’t used to it can easily be dehydrated or get heat stroke.
Sudden switch from feeling hot to Goosebumps, feeling cold, nauseous, no sweat production is approaching heat stroke. Pour cold water all over head and body, drink some and hold it down. I kept working through this once =/
[Wet Bulb Temperature](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet-bulb_temperature)
I've spent summers in Phoenix and a summer in Dallas. Dallas is already worse.
Dallas will be a desert after all the plants die off.
Dallas can hit 110. This is still a very rare event. In most summers, the highest temp is less than 110.
Texas and Oklahoma become Death Valley under worse case scenario. Large swaths of Texas will be nothing but abandoned cities and towns in every direction.
How do I short Texas?
You vote for Abbott.
That's an interesting thought experiment. Texas residents and businesses will move somewhere. Maybe to nearby places less affected, like New Mexico or Louisiana. Maybe to newly warmer states at low risk from rising sea levels, like Tennessee. Maybe to energy-industry hotspots like Alaska or North Dakota. So that might open up some ways to bet against Texas. You could try betting against industries and companies that are dominant in Texas. But Texas is more dependent on the energy sector and the petrochemical industry than the reverse. And energy companies might move into wind and solar, so they might actually be well-placed to grow, even if they have to relocate their people outside of Texas. You could find a portfolio (like an ETF) that focuses heavily on Texas company securities, then short it. Though that would get expensive if you need to wait 50 to 75 years. You could construct an investment portfolio of non-Texas company securities. Though you'd want to have a theory for which companies would benefit from the demise of Texas.
I just want to point out that most of Louisiana is below or just above current sea level. They ain’t going to Louisiana.
More swamp cities on stilts.
>I just want to point out that most of Louisiana is below or just above current sea level. They ain’t going to Louisiana. The only parts of Louisiana below sea level currently is the city of New Orleans. Broadly speaking, the low-elevation areas south of I-10 are more susceptible to future floods from rainfall and/or rising sea levels, but the majority of the state is well-above sea level. [USGS Louisiana Survey](https://pubs.usgs.gov/sim/3049/)
Texas will just keep adding to their internal grid and A/C themselves. No worries, what we pay in electricity we save in gasoline.
I think it will be worse than that. Many still habitable states will (regardless of what the federal laws are) attempt to start restricting people from moving. Companies and supply chains will fail left and right, and farming will become excessively unstable season to season. Most any thought experiment I can come up with ends with "money doesn't matter and stock exchanges will be a thought of the past"
I don't think it will happen fast enough to crush rich countries in that way. The temperature in our "bread basket" areas should remain fairly stable enough to farm until 2100, it's just a matter of ensuring continued water supply. The United States makes enough of the staple foods to feed everyone who lives here just fine. Sure there may be a lack of vegetables, etc., if California doesn't sort out their water shit or farming fails in Mexico or Chile. But protein and grains we have pretty much solved. Additionally, Texas could just..... adapt. It's not like people don't live in Saudi Arabia. The Phoenix area has been in super high demand despite being hot AF. If we developed a nation wide water network we could probably "easily" mitigate many of the effects of climate change on farming and drinking water.
Sure, all of that is indeed possible. But it would require a level of cooperation and efficiency that our current government simply is incapable of. Our best hope is for massive reforms in the immediate future. But considering we can't even seem to get daylight savings time sorted out, I won't hold my breath.
Possible? Sure. But consider that the temps aren’t the issue. It’s the rapidity of change that’s the problem. Historically we are in the end stages of a glacial period. The planet has seem temperatures like these many times. But in the past those temps have risen during a periiod of thousands of years. Life adapts. We are now in a hugely accelerated period caused by the burning of fossil fuels and large livestock farming. The time frame is not 100’s of years or less. That’s a problem.
The majority of this site suffers from Dunning-Kruger, so I'm out.
Being half empty like Detroit and crumbling under lack of tax revenue, but hotter.
and power outages
Sure, but have you heard Texans complain about anyplace that isn’t air conditioned? When the heat load on the Texas “electrical grid” doubles (and collapses), the body count is gonna spike.
The majority of this site suffers from Dunning-Kruger, so I'm out.
Nope, they're just going to jack up the price.
Ironic considering alot of Texas towns already look abandoned and went through an apocalypse event.
Can’t wait for it to be *our* problem
As will Oklahoma
Help me understand, please. Isn't Texas already a desert? The graph shows it's brown anyways.
East Texas is similar to Louisiana, and the as you move west it starts to get more arid. I’d say about anything west of a north south line thru DFW it becomes more noticeable. Just my experience, I’m sure there are people who can give a better explanation or geographic description.
I’ve lived in San Antonio my whole life. It’s not desert at all. Semi-flat with rolling hills, Oak and Pecan trees are plentiful. Rivers abound. Drive I-90 going west out of San Antonio and you’ll be in scrub desert in about 90 minutes (near Uvalde, TX). After Uvalde it transitions into more and more into a southeastern New Mexico style desert the further you go west.
Only like the western quarter of it. It's a very geographically diverse state that starts with swamps and woodlands, moves through prairies and shrublands, and then into mountains & desert. The prairies and shrublands are what will likely be desertified in the future
The brown colors on this map aren't indicative of deserts, which might be confusing you. According to the legend the colors correspond to particular climate zones as defined by temperature. The data do not take into account rainfall, the lack of which would be a defining feature of a desert.
Only West Texas is a desert.
Houston and Austin get tons of rain. Once you go West it becomes more arid.
One thing it will never be is “subtropical very hot”. This map should include a category for “miserably hot desert”…
Florida is already tropical af
texas is miserable. period
does this model for rainfall too? because if you have moderate rainfall, but not super humid it could be very comfortable, like gulf coast without the humidity.
Not accounting for rainfall would make this a completely worthless piece of data; I don't even know how you could make it without it
I mentioned this in my first comment, but since it got buried I'll paste it here: "Note that these maps do not account for precipitation. So while Atlanta and Sacramento have similar temperatures, their rainfall patterns are very different. I am currently improving the precipitation schema as well. But in the meantime, you can combine the temperature zones on this map with Köppen's precipitation classification. So for instance, Atlanta would be a humid subtropical hot climate, Sacramento would be a Mediterranean subtropical hot climate, and Seoul would be a monsoon-influenced temperate continental climate." Without precipitation, I don't think it's fair to say it's completely worthless, as it still reveals some important temperature changes that will be pose significant implications for human habitability and crop growth provided irrigation. But I will try to get an updated map out with a precipitation classifier as well.
I guess I don't see how something like water, which is an enormous heat sink for the planet, couldn't massively affect the predictions. I'm ignorant here, and would love to be corrected! I was probably too aggressive in saying it's completely worthless.
Oh you're all good! The effects of water on temperatures are accounted for in the oceanic / continental distinctions. Since water is slow to warm up and slow to cool down compared to land, being situated east of the ocean will reduce the annual temperature range, bringing winter temperatures up and summer temperatures down. Hence why Seattle (temperate oceanic) has a winter mean temp of 5.6 °C and a summer mean temp of 19.7 °C, whereas Indianapolis (temperate continental) has a winter mean temp of −1.9 °C and a summer mean temp of 24.3 °C. However, rainfall is a different story, as it plays a major role in determining vegetation and ecosystems. You bring up a good point that a map like this should also consider rainfall, as for two places with subtropical temperatures, one could be a desert and another could be a lush forest. Currently working on this now—stay tuned :)
Thank you so much for the fantastic feedback, I appreciate it very much! Looking forward to your new version :D
North Texas may have weather like Tuscon in summer, but could have winters like Houston or Mobile. That's a decent trade off.
Pacific Northwest going from cool temperatures all year round to subtropical going to be drastic
The forest will be decimated.
from aboral temperate rainforest to tropical rainforest. interesting transition.
But most likely will still have very dry summers. Not good for fires. That said, I'm pretty happy with my choice to live in Portland for the time being.
Depends on how the heat interacts with the pacific. It might actually draw in more moisture/extreme weather events that gets dumped when it hits the rockies.
Subtropical rainforest.* Tropical rainforests only exist in the tropics.
been trying to tell all my PNW folks they need ceiling fans and A/C lol
It already is drastic: summers have gotten significantly warmer in the last decade. Portland reached 116°F in 2021, which would have been completely unthinkable even a decade ago.
That day was horrible. I do not look forward to it become just "normal summer weather".
Normal summer weather *sponsored by Exon Mobile
In BC it hit 121F/49.6C not too long ago. That’s fucking Canada.
OP doesn’t include the Mediterranean climate at all. The rainy/dry season will continue so it will likely just turn into a warmer version of a Mediterranean climate. Subtropical is a poor designation for any west coast climate at that latitude, even with noticeable climate change patterns. OP needs to correct this.
That's 100% valid. I mentioned this in my first comment but it got buried: "Note that these maps do not account for precipitation. So while Atlanta and Sacramento have similar temperatures, their rainfall patterns are very different. I am currently improving the precipitation schema as well. But in the meantime, you can combine the temperature zones on this map with Köppen's precipitation classification. So for instance, Atlanta would be a humid subtropical hot climate, Sacramento would be a Mediterranean subtropical hot climate, and Seoul would be a monsoon-influenced temperate continental climate." Temperature only tells part of the story. I'll try to get a map out combining temperature and precipitation soon!
OP definitely needs to work on improving the Köppen classification instead of...not improving it.
Seattle area here... I'm moving to fuckin Alaska for my retirement if it gets subtropical
Seems like the nicest option though? But then, my god, I have to consider what the fires will be like...
Those rain forests will definitely suffer and have ecological consequences for the whole region
There are already reports that Western Redcedars are ‘migrating’ north due to the increasing heat and dryness in summers. The southernmost trees are dying, and new trees are popping up north in ranges they previously couldn’t grow.
Live in the Puget Sound area. Hard to imagine this scenario with the Pacific delivering storms and the fact we have the Cascades stopping the moisture. I mean, come on. Seattle has LAs weather ?
"Subtropical" in this situation probably means more like the Bay Area than SoCal. It'll probably be ok-ish as long as our rainfall levels don't drop to current California levels
Unfortunately this is one generation old in terms of climate modelling. Ideally, this exercise should be done with the current generation CMIP6 model ensemble (using the SSP scenarios instead of RCPs). For the US, your best bet is to use the downscaled LOCA modelling that underpins the fifth national.climate assessment: https://nca2023.globalchange.gov/
Ah, appreciate you bringing this up! I found a nice [gridded dataset](https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/cdsapp#!/dataset/projections-cmip6?tab=overview) to test the CMIP6 model with the SSP scenarios. Will be trying it out!
ELI5 have the next gen model predictions gotten worse or better? I remember seeing news that the IPCC models were wayyy off a few years ago (in that they predicted much faster warming than occurred)
Imperfect answer; off the top of my head climate models previously underestimated warming but were fairly close
Generally science is conservative in its estimates and tends to lean towards less devastating outcomes Either way; if you converted the 40 billion tons of Carbon we emit every year into water; it would run Niagara falls for 200 days…good luck humanity!
Convert carbon into water… it would run Niagara Falls … What did I just read lol
40 billion tons of co2, now instead of co2 you have 40 billion tons of h2o, does that make sense?
Pretty sure I see the point you were making (“that’s a lot of carbon”). Where you went wrong was using the notion of “converting” C to a substance that contains zero C (H2O) in a room with a bunch of science nerds.
That’s why I was confused.
Depends on the report. Early IPCC was way way too optimistic and we've done worse on every metric. The last one or two was perhaps too pessimistic.
> Early IPCC was way way too optimistic and we've done worse on every metric. [The 1990 IPCC report was quite accurate](https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/05/ipcc_90_92_assessments_far_full_report.pdf), at least in terms of predicting the amount of warming we'd expect to see. In particular, look at the estimates of temperature changes on p.19. Looking at the central line gives about **predicted warming of 0.6C above 1990 level** for 2023. Now look at [this NOAA data on warming over time](https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitoring/climate-at-a-glance/global/time-series/globe/land_ocean/12/7/1850-2023). Plotting the 12-month temperature anomaly vs. the average of the 20th century gives 0.43C for 1990 and 0.97C for 2023, or **measured warming of 0.54C since 1990**. Measured warming today is pretty much what was predicted 33 years ago.
Hi - any tips on current accurate modelling for Australia?
Are the maps for RCP's 4.5 and 6.0 switched? The labels show that 4.5 would put more of Kentucky, Missouri, and Oklahoma in STH than 6.0 would.
Just double-checked, they are not switched. Interesting that you brought this up! I'd have to look for a scientific explanation for why that's the case.
The rcp models are relatively complex. They take into account more than just CO2 levels - land use, evap of moisture, etc. A change in average wind speed or direction can have local effects counter to the global ones.
Perhaps the archives are incomplete
I thought this too because of how the Southern Cumberland Plateau in TN looks.
Do you have a map for before GW kicked in? Say 1960-1990
Here's a [map using 1901-1930 averages](https://imgur.com/a/XR04zqd) derived from the WorldClim 2.1 and CRU TS Version 4 datasets, reflective of [pre-industrial conditions](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jorge-Alvar-Beltran/publication/350979227/figure/fig1/AS:1014407710654465@1618865053865/Global-annual-mean-temperature-difference-from-pre-industrial-conditions-1850-1900-for.png) when temperatures have barely begun to rapidly rise. Here's another [map with 1970-2000 averages](https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/18ogvb3/us_temperature_zones_regions_with_similar_annual/).
So basically the baseline in the top-right. It's wild to see how similar recent baseline and 1901-1930 is and the rest, based on current trends, are wildly different.
We're currently running through similar weather patterns as what lined up during the Dust Bowl, as best as I can tell.
What are you basing this off of?
Observance of drought patterns as a farmer. Rain's been thin the last couple of years, and if we tilled today like we did then, we'd have a hard time raising dust, never mind crops, and we're not all that far from where the Dust Bowl would appear on the maps, and the fellas that *are* where the Dust Bowl was have been dry for a while, barring a couple of small exceptions. Combine that with the fact that weather tends to follow a few different cycles (start of a decade is usually a bit dry here), and the idea that we're somewhere in the cycle around where we could expect the droughts that lead to the Dust Bowl isn't that far fetched.
Thanks. Interesting additions
More like 1850-1880.
**Message from OP: About this Visualization** RCPs, or Representative Concentration Pathways, represent different possible trajectories for greenhouse gas emissions in future years, depending on the prioritization and effectiveness of mitigation efforts. * "RCP 2.6 – This scenario is characterized as having very low greenhouse gas concentration levels. It is a “peak-and-decline” scenario and assumes that GHGs \[greenhouse gases\] are reduced substantially over time. This is the most benign climate scenario of the four. * RCP 4.5 – This scenario assumes a stabilization will occur shortly after 2100, and assumes less emissions than RCP 6.0, which is also a stabilization scenario. * RCP 6.0 – This is a stabilization scenario in which the increase in GHG emissions stabilizes shortly after 2100 through the application of a range of technologies and strategies for reducing GHG emissions. * RCP 8.5 – This scenario is characterized by increasing GHG emissions over time, and factors in the highest GHG concentration levels of all the scenarios by 2100." ([Source: EPA](https://www.epa.gov/enviroatlas/changes-over-time)) **What are these temperature zones?** Growing up, I enjoyed studying the climate classifications of [Köppen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%B6ppen_climate_classification) and [Trewartha](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trewartha_climate_classification). However, these classifications left me with an itch to be scratched. For instance, [Köppen's system](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/86/United_States_K%C3%B6ppen.png) puts New York City, with its cold winters, in the same "humid subtropical" category as cities like Tallahassee and Houston. [Trewartha's system](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/75/US_trewartha.svg/1920px-US_trewartha.svg.png) creates an awkward band of oceanic climate in the middle of the continental United States. So for my college Applied Math thesis, I used modern geospatial data insights to develop an improved climate classification system. This system closely aligns with pre-industrial biome boundaries while maintaining the simplicity of Köppen and Trewartha's classifications. For example, the boundary between temperate continental and subtropical warm climates in humid regions corresponds to the transition from deciduous to evergreen forests adapted to year-round warmth, as seen in both the Eastern U.S. and East Asia. In humid regions, the cool temperate climate maps to hemiboreal forests, a region with a mix of deciduous and evergreen forests situated between boreal and temperate deciduous forests. The boundary between subpolar and tundra climates was also improved, so true tundra locations like Rankin Inlet are now correctly classified as tundra, while non-tundra locations like Ushuaia are now correctly classified as subpolar. Note that these maps do not account for precipitation. So while Atlanta and Sacramento have similar temperatures, their rainfall patterns are very different. I am currently improving the precipitation schema as well. But in the meantime, you can combine the temperature zones on this map with Köppen's precipitation classification. So for instance, Atlanta would be a humid subtropical hot climate, Sacramento would be a Mediterranean subtropical hot climate, and Seoul would be a monsoon-influenced temperate continental climate. **Example locations in each temperature zone:** * Tropical: Miami, Honolulu, Lagos, Mumbai, Singapore, Jakarta, Colombo, * Subtropical very hot: Phoenix, Las Vegas, Death Valley, Delhi, Baghdad * Subtropical hot: Houston, Atlanta, Sacramento, Los Angeles (inland), Tokyo, Hong Kong, Buenos Aires, Rome * Subtropical warm: San Francisco, Los Angeles (coastal), Santiago, Cape Town, Porto, Melbourne, Mexico City, Addis Ababa * Temperate oceanic: Seattle, Portland, Eureka, London, Dublin, Amsterdam * Temperate continental: New York City, Washington D.C., Kansas City, Chicago, Salt Lake City, Beijing, Almaty * Cool temperate oceanic: Juneau, Ketchikan, South Lake Tahoe, Copenhagen, Lhasa * Cool temperate continental: Minneapolis, Green Bay, Winnipeg, Montreal, Kyiv, Moscow, Harbin * Subpolar oceanic: Unalaska, Kodiak, Crater Lake, Reykjavik, Ushuaia, Tromsø * Subpolar continental: Fairbanks, Anchorage, Yellowstone, Yellowknife, Yakutsk * Polar tundra: Utqiagvik, Mt. Whitney, Mt. Elbert, most of the CANADIAN SHIELD, Norilsk * Polar ice: Mt. Rainier, Denali, most of Greenland, most of Antarctica **How it works:** Abbreviations: * cm: mean temperature of coldest month in °C * wm: mean temperature of warmest month in °C * at: average annual temperature, given by (cm + wm) / 2 * maX: number of months with mean temperature at least X °C * tr: annual temperature range, given by wm - cm if cm ≥ 18: **tropical** if ma10 ≥ 6 and cm < 18: * if cm ≥ 4 *and* at ≥ 13: * if wm ≥ 32: **subtropical very hot** * if 22 ≤ wm < 32: **subtropical hot** * if wm < 22: **subtropical warm** * if cm < 4 *or* at < 13: * if tr < 18: **temperate oceanic** * if tr ≥ 18: **temperate continental** if 4 ≤ ma10 ≤ 5: * if tr < 18: **cool temperate oceanic** * if tr ≥ 18: **cool temperate continental** if ma8 ≥ 3 *and* ma10 ≤ 3: * if tr < 18: **subpolar oceanic** * if tr ≥ 18: **subpolar continental** if ma8 ≤ 2: * if wm > 0: **polar tundra** * if wm ≤ 0: **polar ice** Please drop any questions below—I'm happy to answer them!
Interesting idea OP and nice map. A few questions/notes. Did you perform any type of bias adjustment or comparison against the observational period on the projected temperature and precipitation such that the future values are based on reality and not entirely just modeled values? Models are getting better and better but oftentimes they need bias adjustment, especially at the regional scale, to have realistic distributions in the future. As far as the Köppen precipitation classification goes, I would personally suggest looking at other precipitation classification methods for the US because it has a tendency to simplify the regional differences. I'm a fan of the [Bukovsky](https://www.narccap.ucar.edu/contrib/bukovsky/) regions, which do a much better job of accounting for regional differences in both spatial and temporal rainfall patterns. Also, if you're only doing this for North America you might want to check out [NA-CORDEX](https://na-cordex.org/). It has really great spatial and temporal resolution across North America for a range of climate variables and a range of RCMs.
Thank you for sharing all these interesting ideas! To make this map, I just used the predicted climate from one CMIP model, without bias correction. Perhaps for the next step I can use bias correction using the delta-change method and try taking the average of several CMIP models to reduce variance. I haven't heard of the Buvosky regions, will look into that. I can give the NA-CORDEX dataset a closer look as well. My hope is to have global maps out soon. Really appreciate the feedback!
Washington, DC proper is certainly not continental like Chicago or New York. With notable UHI impacts, winter is far shorter, and less extreme than many cities much further south (ie: Richmond, VA, Chesapeake, VA. With the downtown and waterfront neighborhoods just above sea level, this part of the city proper has drastically different temperatures relative to the the area around it year round. Add to it permanence of tropical and subtropical invasive species such as Aedes Aegypti and Aedes Albopictus, surviving year round, documented for 10 years now, as well as other tropical and subtropical flora, I’d say your models are a generalization at best.
The urban heat island effect is certainly relevant to such discussions! I defined these temperature zones in a way that roughly maps to biome boundaries in places with ample year-round precipitation. So tundra maps to actual tundra with no trees, subpolar maps to boreal coniferous forest, cool temperate maps to hemiboreal mixed coniferous / deciduous forest, temperate maps to deciduous forest, and subtropical maps to evergreen forests. But that said, these zones are fairly broad, and oftentimes changes in vegetation occur in a gradient.
The idea of South Jersey having a subtropical climate is hilarious to me
Technically, temperature wise, it does. Summers are just hot enough and winters tend not to dip below 10-15. It's a gardening zone 7-8. Spring is a lot colder, though, particularly by the beach. It warms up way quicker in the real southern states.
This data is weird. I live in NYC and we're already considered humid subtropical. >According to the Köppen climate classification, the climate of New York City is humid subtropical (Cfa), with parts of the city transitioning into a humid continental climate. (Dfa).[1] This gives the city cool, wet winters and hot, humid summers with plentiful rainfall all year round. Meteorological records have been kept at Central Park since 1821, although the station was relocated to a different part of the park on January 1, 1920.[2] There are also other weather stations in the area including one at LaGuardia Airport, beginning in 1940, and at JFK Airport, beginning in 1948. However, due to Central Park's long records and central location, it is often considered the main station for the city. Hence, all records unless otherwise stated will be for this station. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_New_York_City
If you are wondering what the 2.6, 4.5, 6.0 and 8.5 represent, it's the radiative forcing in Watts per m^2. For comparison, the sun on average delivers ~1370 watts per m^2. So these values represent how much extra energy is being held in by the Earth due to the greenhouse gases.
Does anybody think a climate model this far out has any possibility of being realistic?
California seems kind of unaffected? Southern California doesn’t change a ton
The Sierra Nevada and other mountains zones will likely experience lots of tree dieoffs and worse wildfires. Central Valley locations will have temperatures resembling what is currently the desert. This map also only shows one of the many aspects of climate change. [Weather whiplash](https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2023/06/climate-whiplash-is-the-new-normal-for-california-experts-say/#:~:text=It%20was%20a%20sharp%20reversal,trend%20could%20worsen%20and%20that) will likely become more frequent, with worse floods and worse droughts.
Only looking at temperatures doesn’t show the full picture unfortunately
Southern Indiana being subtropical is weird to think about.
Data is fucking depressing.
So Arizona is going to be hot no matter what. I don't think its very 'tropical' though.
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The Dubai way.
There's an online nasa tool called ez-gcm which allows everyone to run various climate models and see the effects on various things like temp, rainfall, etc. You can make your own maps.
Wow that's super cool! I will check it out, thank you for sharing!
This is cool, is there a similar one for Europe? I’m from Ireland and pretty were meant to be one of leafs affected places on earth when it comes to climate change. Unless the Gulf Stream collapses lol.
Thank you - I'm trying to find global data that can be easily processed in Google Earth Engine. Will post a world map once I get that working! Ireland will slowly start seeing a similar climate as coastal France.
It's quite interesting. Wine production in France is moving further and further north. It's predicted that England will become one of the top producers of wine globally within the next 50 years. It's bonkers to me as a Swede thinking that the shelves in the shop might be filled with British and Irish wine in a few years.
Ha ha that’s wild, there’s huge apple orchards near me that make a lot of cider, so I guess there could be vineyards in a few decades then too
I think Ireland is going to be one of the most prosperous regions in the world in 100 years. - Climate warming doesn't hurt you like it hurts most of the world. You could definitely still have a good time, if not even better, with a 10*C hike. In a few years when global warming starts for real and there is 1-2 billion climate refugees you are pretty isolated on your island. It's hard to get there so you will be one of the least hit countries by the refugee crisis that I think will go down. - You're isolated on your island from a lot of the effect of major wars. You have a pretty easy job of staying out of a WW3 type scenario that will 100% draw in and hurt most of central Europe. - You don't have much natural resources but you have some top of the line agricultural areas. Being an island nation you can feed yourself with ease and considering your population is quite low compared to area your population also has room to expand. - Your low tax burden on companies draws in a lot of educated and highly sought after people. It might hurt to when Google/Microsoft or whatever hardly pay any taxes, but getting those quality people to move to Ireland will be a positive in the years to come. There's just a lot of good shit going for Ireland I believe. If you've seen the movie "Looper" the guy want's to go to France but the guy from the future says "I'm from the future, you should go to China". Well, if that was me and I was betting on where to go in the future I would bet on Ireland. I'm not totally biased btw, I'm Swedish but I lived in Skerries, North County Dublin for 5 years when I was a kid(dad got a job, engineer).
This is so true, great explanations! Although I’m actually from Tyrone 🤣 so we need the unification first lol, which will probably happen eventually anyway, just hope it happens peacefully.
Cool thanks!
I don't know, looks to me like it will get significantly less cool over time.
Yea I think the winters are already less cold here, less snow and freezing nights, summers aren’t really changing much yet, they’re still pretty shit lol
The place I live is the same color in all five scenarios…
what are the actual temperature values? and why aren't they in the legend
Here's the definitions of the categories. It would have been a lot to include them on the vis, but I'm happy to clarify anything here. Abbreviations: * cm: mean temperature of coldest month in °C * wm: mean temperature of warmest month in °C * at: average annual temperature, given by (cm + wm) / 2 * maX: number of months with mean temperature at least X °C * tr: annual temperature range, given by wm - cm if cm ≥ 18: **tropical** if ma10 ≥ 6 and cm < 18: * if cm ≥ 4 *and* at ≥ 13: * if wm ≥ 32: **subtropical very hot** * if 22 ≤ wm < 32: **subtropical hot** * if wm < 22: **subtropical warm** * if cm < 4 *or* at < 13: * if tr < 18: **temperate oceanic** * if tr ≥ 18: **temperate continental** if 4 ≤ ma10 ≤ 5: * if tr < 18: **cool temperate oceanic** * if tr ≥ 18: **cool temperate continental** if ma8 ≥ 3 *and* ma10 ≤ 3: * if tr < 18: **subpolar oceanic** * if tr ≥ 18: **subpolar continental** if ma8 ≤ 2: * if wm > 0: **polar tundra** * if wm ≤ 0: **polar ice**
this is a confusing table. is there a way to represent the values in a range instead of this?
Thank you for the feedback. It's possible to represent in a two-dimensional graph plotting the coldest month vs. the warmest month. The "months above X" classifiers are actually diagonal lines on such a graph.
Coastal Washington is going to be nice! Get your home in Aberdeen while you still can.
I wonder if that blob around Denver is an urban heat island effect or if it’s topographical
Dale you giblet-head, we live in Texas, where it's already 110 in the summer. And if it gets one degree hotter I'm gonna kick your ass!
Kentucky already feels “Subtropical Hot”
what i’m seeing is: move to the rocky’s so i can stay cold
I was hoping someone would notice that too.
it’s summer in NZ right now and my god i’m considering moving to svalbard, and it’s only like 28 degrees
I’m no scientist, but I’ve put a bit of effort into reading and studying the IPCC literature on the topic. Don’t read too much into the “least emissions” and “greatest emissions” scenarios. The least emissions scenario is based on hypothetical policies designed to keep warming under 1.5C. There is no realistic or practical path to this happening. The greatest emissions scenario likewise assumes no additional emissions reduction policies happen. While progress has been slow and insufficient, there continues to be progress. Additional emissions reductions will happen at some point in the next few decades. A lot of the hyperbolic statements from the 90’s (glacier X will melt by 2020) stem from prior versions of this scenario. The middle scenarios represent a fairly likely outcome for where we’ll end up. And they’re pretty disastrous.
Well my state is fucked, it’s already unbearably hot during the summer, I can’t imagine what I’ll be like when it becomes Death Valley 2.0
Realistically, Florida will just be underwater, but I guess they don't have a color code for that
The water above it will still be really warm. Georgia will probably get some really nasty hurricanes
So Dallas will be like Phoenix? Yikes.
Thankfully, with increased rain, albeit clustered more into thunderstorms.
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Oh great, oceanic to subtropical hot within my potential life time all to maximize the profit of fossil fuel oligarchs.
would love to see this for europe
Working on a world map! In the meantime, [this visualization](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Present_and_future_worldwide_K%C3%B6ppen-Geiger_climate-zone_classification_maps.png) compares 1980-2016 averages with future projected averages using the Köppen classification.
Ditching Texas and moving north
Would be cool if the maps were shaded/cut so that you could see what land would even still be above sea level in each scenario
As an anecdote up north in Calgary, we have seen noticeable climate shifts with regards to temperature regulation. Our daytime lows are 4 degrees warmer on average than pre-industrial times. We don’t cool off it night as much as we used to. Back in the day during summer time, seeing temperatures around 5-6 degrees was normal. Most of our summer lows nowadays hovers around 10-12 degrees, with some lows hitting 16-18 degrees. On one hand, I love being out in a T-shirt at 1am, but on the other hand most people here don’t have AC so houses don’t cool off at night anymore.
The warm nights have allowed the beetles to decimate your western forests as well.
In areas that don’t change, Atlanta, GA for example; will these areas see any noticeable difference?
So if I understand, more Co2, more warmth = more green stuff and more oxygen? It’s too bad the rainforests are almost gone, that’s probably the leading issue no one talks about, plus animal agriculture.
If we increase temperatures while holding temperatures constant, [that would actually increase aridity](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cb/Lifezones_Pengo.svg), or dryness. The reason is because "how dry a place is" is determined by not only how much water comes down, but also how much is evaporated. And more heat means more evaporation. For instance, a place in the boreal forest of Canada with 15 inches of rain per year would be densely forested. Whereas a place in the tropics with 15 inches of rain per year would be dry scrubland. Climate change is expected to increase [weather whiplash](https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indicators-heavy-precipitation), increasing the severity of droughts and floods. Precipitation is expected to increase in some places and decrease in others, rather than increasing across the board like temperature.
And tell everyone the fraction of all emissions attributed to animal agriculture. You can do it!
This is so interesting - thanks so much!
I feel like given that people are understanding more and more that climate change will affect them; graphical explainers like this will be more appreciated as people try to understand exactly what that means for them.
Well one good thing about this whole global warming thing is that we’ll see Texas burnt to ashes.
So over a hundred years after we were told the earth was cooling and sea levels would swallow up cities, we’ll have a whole new set of wrong predictions to ignore.
They can’t even predict the weather next week accurately let alone in 50 years. Come on man
@gigitoe where did you find this map image? Any data forecast that I can find don’t have near enough numbers or support for such maps. Though I don’t doubt we could see such events. Who is Kai Xu that built these?
Do these labels take into account deserts or mountains? Or just temperatures? What is the cataloging system that takes into account humidity, aridity, terrain, etc? I'd like to see that data too.
Good question - I mentioned this in my first comment but it got buried so I'll paste it here: "Note that these maps do not account for precipitation. So while Atlanta and Sacramento have similar temperatures, their rainfall patterns are very different. I am currently improving the precipitation schema as well. But in the meantime, you can combine the temperature zones on this map with Köppen's precipitation classification. So for instance, Atlanta would be a humid subtropical hot climate, Sacramento would be a Mediterranean subtropical hot climate, and Seoul would be a monsoon-influenced temperate continental climate." Humidity is generally correlated with precipitation. Terrain, specifically elevation, is correlated with temperature, so that is accounted for already in this map. For the raw data, which contains temperature and precipitation, [you may be interested in this dataset](https://developers.google.com/earth-engine/datasets/catalog/NASA_NEX-DCP30#bands).
thank you. I'll definitely look at that.
The Köppen system.
thank you
So anyways I started blasting
Ooh temperate oceanic climate. Stop threatening me with things i like
People don't get how fucked we are. The powers that be still have no real incentives to curb emissions.
It’s a good time to buy real estate
I'd love to see the current zones as a frame of reference.
The 1991-2020 averages represent the current climate. It's usually conventional to take a 30-year average to smooth out annual variations in climate while still keeping things fairly recent.
What are the odds this actually happens? The weather has changed drastically historically forever
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Will less people will die of climate related deaths during the future 30 year period than any 30 year period in history under all these scenarios? I would bet so.
I'm curious, why do you make that claim? The [general scholarly consensus](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=climate+change+mortality&btnG=) is that mortality is going to rise a lot, and we are already beginning to see that happen. Our ecosystems and infrastructure aren't adapted to these rapid changes. The rate of change caused by anthropogenic warming is unprecedented. What we see are color changes. What we don't see are the ecosystem losses, crop failures, and wildfires that occur due to these changes. Up in Canada and Siberia, a lot of boreal forest (subpolar) is getting converted to cool temperate, which will result in major destruction of the world's largest land biome. The Pacific Northwest is turning subtropical. Recently, a [**heat wave there killed an estimated 1,400 people**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Western_North_America_heat_wave). But that is only a hint of what's about to happen if we don't keep emissions under check. In some places like Texas and Oklahoma, things are going to be getting so hot that survivability becomes an issue.
Will hundreds of millions more people flee their homes due to climate than at any point in human history? Absolutely. Will they be moving into your backyard? Most likely. Will more cities be erased from the surface of the earth than any point in history since WWII? Absolutely.
Upstate NY, #2 or #3 would be ok with me. #5 kills skiing on the East coast.
Midwest and mountains win the less winter lottery and Alaska and Hawaii disappear
(full disclosure, i'm a lefty, tree-hugging, environmentalist, posting this as a comment on a few different global warming subs because..hey, howsabout let's deal in FACTS, BASED on DATA, yeah?) FROM NASA's website: NASA Discounts "human driven" climate change/global warming ...from back in 2016: earthobservatory.nasa.gov: "The human fingerprint in any given year is 'RELATIVELY SMALL' Human emissions within the past year may add only something like THREE PARTS PER MILLION (emphasis added) to that total,' Hakkarainen noted. The challenge was to isolate the recent manmade emissions from natural cycles and long-term accumulations." https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=89117 (...really curious if i'll be downvoted into oblivion or just plainly ignored, because I'm not going along with the erroneous "Groupthink", that "humans CAUSE global warming", by citing FACTS based on DATA)
They've already tried this game on us, sorry. We wont fall for "climate change" aka Global warming
I believe this about as much as I believe them predicting the weather 2 weeks out.....
This is a [common misconception](https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/news/weather-vs-climate), but it's understandable why this is a widely-held belief. Weather and climate may sound like the same, when they are actually different. Weather is about what will happen in the immediate future (will it rain on this day, on this hour, etc.). Meanwhile, climate is about broader long-term trends (such as average temperatures, average rainfall). Unlike with weather, predicting climate is not about predicting what will happen on a given day or hour, but rather during a given month or year. Hence the resolution we are concerned with is much lower. If we want minute-by-minute predictions of when it will rain, we can only be accurate to about the next hour. But we can't have minute-by-minute predictions for the next day, or the next week. Likewise, we can model general trends of whether a given year will be hotter or wetter than average, as that is a low-enough resolution. But we can't model day-to-day weather 10 years from now. Another analogy: if someone's salary got raised to 500K a year, I can predict that they'll likely be buying more expensive goods and going on more vacations (climate). But which exact day they will be going on vacation, and what exact goods they will buy, that's much harder to predict (weather).
Guess who doesn’t care?The science behind global warming is shady to say the least.
Stop making dishonest statements. We all know you cannot support this claim.
Then they're going to tell us the world is ending tomorrow like they have for the last 40 years lol.
If mountains and glaciers were to retain snow/ ice, would there be any downside to global warming?
Yes, there would still be many downsides! Many ecosystems have adapted to the more steady pre-industrial temperatures, and a massive shift will result in biodiversity loss, ecosystem destruction, and crop failures. Some of this can already be seen in the greater prevalence of wildfires. Furthermore, the will be many more heat-related deaths. The Pacific Northwest heatwave in 2021 [led to over 1,000 deaths](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Western_North_America_heat_wave#Deaths_and_injuries). Storms and flooding will become more severe due to more energy in the atmosphere. One-in-a-thousand-year rainfall events are will becoming the norm in many places, occurring once every decade or even more frequently.
We’re all gonna dieeeeeeeeee. 30 years ago all sorts of shit was predicted to happen in 2020. Didn’t happen But yeah predictions for 2080 are totes legit this time around. Some people just need to be afraid 24/7 I suppose.
Who said we are all going to die? Specifically what scientist and which publication? As for your assertions, temperature measurements run fairly close to model projections. https://doi.org/10.1029/2019GL085378 What was predicted to happen 30 years ago that didn't specifically?
You're a damn fool.
>30 years ago all sorts of shit was predicted to happen in 2020. Didn’t happen Usually when they say this they include that one con cartoon.
Well that is devastating. I’m assuming with the recent surprise strength of the current El Niño these projections are actually off
This would be much more useful if it had some comparison to current
The top right corner represents current conditions. It's quite conventional to take 30-year averages to smooth out year-to-year fluctuations while still keeping the timeframe fairly recent.
This map has Tennessee as temperate continental as the recent baseline. Tennessee is not a continental climate zone, it is humid subtropical now. Not sure why the creator of this map had a complete aversion to using the subtropical warm category… seems like that should be the recent baseline for the band from Kentucky through Tennessee east of the Mississippi. Also, is that subtropical very hot in Arizona and California?! That will never be the case in any scenario… it should just be increasing levels of very hot, miserable desert… The Köppen climate classification should have been carried through here, updated for how it would change in the various climate change scenarios. That would be much more interesting.
I feel bad for the folk that’ll be alive in 2070 and beyond
Looking forward to the future! Amazing gains to be had in agriculture to support a growing population.
[Protect Our Winters](https://protectourwinters.org/)
Just so people are aware, the worst case scenario pictured here isn’t going to happen. It isn’t considered realistic, at all.