A new interactive map allows users to visualize what their city’s climate might be like in 60 years. Developed by Matt Fitzpatrick of the University of Maryland’s Center for Environmental Sciences, this tool, named ‘Future Urban Climate App’uses numerical calculations to project expected climate changes due to greenhouse gas emissions.
“Climate change has already begun to transform planet Earth and it is expected that in the coming decades these dramatic transformations accelerate in a continuous response to greenhouse gas emissions,” they explain from the application itself.
This tool allows users to explore what summers and winters will be like future climates in their city and compare them to places that already have those climate conditions today. For example, to experience what New York’s climate will be like in 2080, New Yorkers should travel north to Mississippi, where summers are long, hot and humid, and winters lack snow.
An interesting aspect of the tool is that there are no perfect matches for the future climate of cities. The magnitude of the expected climate change is such that many cities will experience unprecedented weather conditions.. Especially in cities close to the equator, where there are no current climatic analogues anywhere on the planet.
How to use this “Google Maps”
Users must select a city from the list located on the left side of the page or click on one of the cities highlighted with a purple circle on the interactive map.
Once the city is selected, A line is drawn from the selected city to the location in the world that currently has the climate most similar to that expected in that city in 60 years.This location represents the best possible climate match found on Earth, although it is not a perfect match. The size of the circle on the map indicates the degree of similarity: larger circles represent lesser matches, while smaller circles indicate better matches, functioning similarly to a bullseye in a game of darts.
It is important to note that some cities, especially those close to the equator, are expected to warm so much that There is currently no location on the planet with a similar representative climate.For these cities, “there is nothing to map, no line or similar surface, so the app just returns a message stating that there are no mappable analogues for the selected location,” says Google Maps itself. Chennai, India, is a good example of this case.
This is what it will be like to live in Spain in 60 years
For high emissions, summers are expected in Madrid will be 7.8°C warmer and 11.1% drier. Winters are expected to be 4°C warmer and 10.8% drier. In this line, They point out that the climate that the Spanish capital will have in six decades will be comparable to that currently experienced by Pedro Abad, a municipality in the province of CórdobaAndalusia.
In the case of Barcelonasummers are expected to be 5.7°C warmer and 0.9% wetter. Winters will be 3.3°C warmer and 6% wetter. This time, the climate coincidence line goes a little further, to Rignano Garganico in Puglia, Italy.
Valenciafor its part, will have summers that are 5.9 °C warmer and 4.3% wetter, and winters that are 7.4% drier. Once again, the coincidence that best fits the future climate is found today in the Cordoba municipality of Pedro Abad.
In Sevillesummers are expected to be 5.4°C warmer and 28.2% wetter, while winters will be 3.3°C warmer and 10% drier. Climate conditions predicted for 2080 in the Andalusian city that can be found today in Melville, Western Australia.