Discover How Climate Change Will Impact Your Hometown with this Interactive Web Application!

The impacts of climate change are being felt all over the world, and a new interactive web application from the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science is shedding light on how these changes will affect cities and towns around the globe. The application allows users to search over 40,000 places and 5,000 metro areas to match the expected future climate in each city with the current climate of another location, providing a relatable picture of what is likely in store.

As we face rising temperatures and shifting weather patterns, many people are left wondering how these changes will impact their hometowns. Will summers become unbearably hot? Will winters become milder or disappear altogether? The web application helps to answer these questions by providing a glimpse into the future climate of different cities.

For example, residents of Washington, D.C., can expect summers to be 11.5°F warmer by 2080, making the city feel more like northern Louisiana. Similarly, those living in Shanghai, China, may experience a climate more akin to northern Pakistan in the coming decades.

Professor Matthew Fitzpatrick, a spatial ecologist, utilized climate-analog mapping to create these projections. By matching the expected future climate of one location with the current climate of another, Fitzpatrick provides a tangible understanding of how climate change will impact different regions. The data used in the mapping comes from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the leading authority on climate science.

The web application offers insights into two different emissions scenarios: one where greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise at a high rate, leading to a 9°F increase in global temperatures by the end of the century, and another where emissions are drastically reduced in line with the goals of the Paris Climate Accord, resulting in a 3°F increase in temperatures.

Fitzpatrick hopes that this tool will spark conversations about climate change and help people grasp the magnitude of the impacts we are facing. By visualizing the potential future climates of different cities, individuals can better understand the urgency of taking action to mitigate climate change.

To explore how climate change will impact your hometown, you can visit the web application at https://fitzlab.shinyapps.io/cityapp/.