Imagine it’s a Saturday morning in Santa Monica in the year 2080. You brew your coffee, open your front door and breathe in the hot, dry air of ... San Bernardino?
That’s the potential future if climate change continues unabated, according to a new mapping tool from researchers at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. The tool draws direct lines between an area’s projected climate in 60 years and the places that are experiencing that climate today.
The map is a “really interesting way to communicate to people the magnitude of climate change that we’re expecting,” said Matt Fitzpatrick, the tool’s creator and a professor of global change ecology.
He noted that sometimes warnings about global warming — such as international 1.5-degree Celsius limits, or predictions that the Earth will be 5 degrees Fahrenheit warmer by the end of the century — can feel distant or hard to grasp.
“These analyses were a way to really bring it home to people,” Fitzpatrick said. “It’s a way to translate these abstract numbers into something that’s a lot more tangible and meaningful.”
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The results are significant.
Under a high emissions scenario — or one in which fossil fuel consumption and global warming continue unchecked — Los Angeles will see summers that are about 7.7 degrees warmer and winters that are 5.6 degrees warmer, with the overall climate more akin to current conditions in Rialto, a city in southwestern San Bernardino County.
San Francisco will feel more like Jamul, a census-designated place in San Diego County not far from the Mexican border, with summers that are 8.5 degrees warmer and winters that are 6.4 degrees warmer.
Sacramento will feel like Garnet, an area near Palm Springs in Riverside County, with summers that are 10.4 degrees warmer and winters that are 7.1 degrees warmer.
It’s not only the temperature that will change. The map lays out how precipitation could shift, with many parts of California expected to see wetter summers and winters in addition to warmer ones. However, Fitzpatrick noted that drought may still be more common because warmer conditions dry out soil more quickly.
Vegetation is also expected to transition in a warming world, with places such as Redding shifting from a Mediterranean landscape defined by woodlands and scrubs to one that is more of a desert or Xeric shrubland akin to Fountain Hills, Ariz., the map shows.
Fitzpatrick said the tool uses modeling from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and various other research groups to draw its comparisons.
“I’m taking the data produced by those models and doing a relatively simple statistical analysis where I say, here’s the forecast for the Greater Los Angeles region for the end of the century, and then I say, what places on Earth have that climate today?” he said.
But it also lays out what’s at stake for people who aren’t happy with the results in their area by comparing different outcomes based on humanity’s ability to reduce the emissions that are driving climate change.
In a lower emissions scenario that curbs fossil fuels, Santa Monica’s best climate analog would be Castaic, not Rialto.
Every bit of planetary warming will have impacts beyond those already occurring, including biodiversity loss, longer heat waves and extreme rainfall.
Fitzpatrick modeled the disparate outcomes using two specific scenarios outlined by the intergovernmental panel.
The high emissions scenario used for the modeling refers to a world in which carbon dioxide emissions double from current levels by 2100, driving a steady increase in temperatures with average global warming of more than 6 degrees by the end of the century.
In that world, food supplies will be compromised and countries will become more competitive over resources. Economic development will slow, as will investments in education and technological development, among other outcomes.
The low scenario is considered the most optimistic. It outlines a world in which global carbon emissions are cut to net zero around 2050 and societies transition toward more sustainable pathways, limiting global warming to 2.7 degrees, or 1.5 degrees Celsius. Inequality will decline and health and education will improve. While there will still be some extreme weather events, many of the worst outcomes of climate change will have been avoided.
The difference between the two scenarios is apparent in the map tool. Under the high emissions scenario, the average distance to the closest climate match is about 620 miles, compared with less than half that distance — and in some cases less than a hundred miles — in a low emissions scenario, Fitzpatrick said.
“The longer we wait, the harder it is to address this problem, but it’s not hopeless. There’s still plenty that we can do to try to avoid the worst effects,” he said. However, “we’re performing a giant experiment on our planet right now, and things could get really bad. Scientists could be just as easily under-predicting the outcomes [as] they could be over-predicting.”
Earth has experienced 12 consecutive months of warming at or above 1.5 degrees Celsius — a threshold for avoiding the worst effects of climate change.
Indeed, the tool’s findings are probably conservative, according to Bill Patzert, a retired climatologist from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada-Flintridge.
August and September in Los Angeles are already about 7 to 8 degrees warmer than they were at the beginning of the 20th century, so while it’s not surprising that the map draws similar conclusions for 2080, the reality could be even worse, he said.
“The curve will continue to increase,” Patzert said. “It’s going to continue to get warmer, and not only that — I’ll guarantee that it’s going to be warmer than [this map] says, and the implications will be more serious in 10 and 20 and 30 years from now than they were in the last 20 years.”
What’s more, Patzert said the map could do more to drive home the effects of such changes, including worsening wildfires, shrinking water supplies and adverse effects on human health and the economy. Extreme heat is already the deadliest climate hazard, and by 2080, heat-related mortality will be significant, he said.
“This is no longer an academic exercise,” Patzert said. “This is serious business, and from here on out, the implications are worse and worse than they were in the 20th century.”
Extreme heat is becoming more frequent and more severe. Here’s how much hotter it could get in California and the West.
And while the map draws direct connections, there is often not just one analog for any given place. In fact, the map’s “climate similarity surface” feature shows that Los Angeles of 2080 will also feel like portions of Algeria, Jordan and western Australia feel today.
Additionally, some cities have no analog — meaning there is no direct comparison to how warm those places are going to feel in the future. That includes some areas near the equator and some parts of the Middle East, such as Aden, Yemen.
“Future climate for this location is expected to be unlike anything currently found anywhere on Earth, so there are no climate matches for this location,” the map says about Aden.
Other parts of the world show significant shifts as well. Under a high emission scenario, New York City will feel like parts of Texas; Chicago like parts of Oklahoma; and Miami like Saudi Arabia, the map shows. Internationally, Dublin will feel like Basque Country, Spain; London like Nouvelle-Aquitaine, France; and Rome like Berat, Albania.
Fitzpatrick said he chose to focus the analysis on the year 2080 because it’s far enough away to show the magnitude of expected impacts but close enough that it will be within many people’s lifetimes, and certainly within the lifetimes of children who are going to “live through this entire transition.”
One unexpected outcome is that some people like the results they are seeing — such as parts of Germany that are expected to feel more like Italy in 2080, Fitzpatrick said.
“I didn’t really anticipate that,” he said. “But the counter to that is that it might be good for you, but on the whole it’s going to be really bad for everybody else. You guys know that in California.”
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