About 500 miles away and mainly to the south

February 14, 2019 9:54 AM

In the coming decades, the climates of North American cities will shift to those of locations that are hundreds of miles away or, in some cases, to climates "with no modern equivalent in North America”. An interactive map shows what the climates of 540 urban areas in the US and Canada will feel like 60 years from now.

The map was created by Matt Fitzpatrick at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science and Robert Dunn of North Carolina State University [previously], who have also published an accompanying paper that details their methods for climate-analog mapping.

In general, the closest analogs for future North American climates are to the south. But due to changing precipitation patterns significant eastward or westward shifts may also be involved. And for higher altitude cities, the nearest equivalent future climate may even exist to the north at lower elevations.

The map and study look at two different scenarios: a business-as-usual future with no significant cuts to greenhouse gas emissions, and a moderate reduction in emissions as envisioned under the Paris Agreement.

"Under the business as usual emissions the average urban dweller is going to have to drive nearly 1,000 km to the south to find a climate like that expected in their home city by 2080," said Fitzpatrick. "Not only is climate changing, but climates that don't presently exist in North America will be prevalent in a lot of urban areas."

posted by theory (42 comments total)

I'm on mobile, does it just say summer information or is there a way to get the year round shown?

Houston will be 5.8F hotter (which seems rough, but doable) and 20% wetter (which holy crap).
posted by BeeDo at 10:03 AM on February 14, 2019 [3 favorites]

It seems to only say summer information on desktop.
The weather in my area of MN seems to be going north to Winnipeg.

We're projected to be like Lansing, Kansas: "The typical summer in Lansing, Kansas is 6.5°F (3.6°C) warmer and 8.9% wetter than summer in Minneapolis-St Paul."
posted by ZeusHumms at 10:11 AM on February 14, 2019

BeeDo - I don't think so -- clicking around, sometimes I get summer and sometimes winter. They may have specifically chosen to illustrate the season with the greatest change.

Seattle is projected to have somewhat warmer and significantly drier summers. We already have a drought every summer. I guess burn bans will move earlier and earlier each year.
posted by kalimac at 10:11 AM on February 14, 2019 [3 favorites]

Great project. An engineering professor I worked for in grad school taught an environmental responsibility class for mining engineering students (required for the iron ring) and he used to tell the class that in 100 years, the climate of Sudbury (it's on the map north of Toronto) would resemble Georgia's in a worst case scenario.

And then he'd get 30 fourth-year mining engineering students raising their hands to argue that climate change wasn't real.
posted by Fish Sauce at 10:17 AM on February 14, 2019 [18 favorites]

If I'm reading this correctly, the information is given in bubbles of expository text centered on points of the map. This doesn't really give me a good idea of what's going to happen. Focusing on what will happen at a single location underplays the severity that small changes will have when magnified on a global scale. I want to see a map that actually draws the biome changes when you change between today and different future scenarios. I want to see how these changes will affect arable land.

This map tells me that New York will become like Louisiana. Big deal! If I just look at that one line it doesn't seem so bad. But if I take the extra mental step and imagine all those lines at the same time, I start to ask questions like: where will the food come from? What do you think those countries that can no longer grow enough food will do?
posted by I-Write-Essays at 10:18 AM on February 14, 2019 [4 favorites]

How Global Warming Will Change Outside's Best Towns
posted by the man of twists and turns at 10:21 AM on February 14, 2019 [1 favorite]

More humid? If it gets any more humid my body will turn to 47% mildew.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 10:22 AM on February 14, 2019 [7 favorites]

Surprise, DC will probably just be even hotter and grosser.

I want to see how these changes will affect arable land.
This. And the answer is actually "we don't know." Hotter and wetter is good for some things and in some places will mean the difference between "irrigate to get water" and "irrigate to take water away." And this is very US-centric - a couple years of crop failure in certain regions will completely fuck up the world food supply.
posted by aspersioncast at 10:28 AM on February 14, 2019 [1 favorite]

For high emissions, New York's climate in 2080 will feel most like today's climate near Jonesboro, ArkansasAtlantis, but not as cool as in Aquaman.
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:35 AM on February 14, 2019 [7 favorites]

I played with this to see what part of the world might actually most be close to what it is like in New York City currently - and got St. John, New Brunswick, which is not that far from where my grandmother was born and was her family's embarkation point when they emigrated to the U.S.

It's giving me pause to think that some of her descendants may someday want to move back.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:37 AM on February 14, 2019 [1 favorite]

Great project, but I wish they had better data for eastern Canada. We're already record holders in most of the shit weather records out there, including average wind speed, and that seems to be getting worse due to climate change. Warmer and drier sound like good things here, but they don't matter much if you can't stand up outdoors due to 150km/h winds.
posted by peppermind at 10:42 AM on February 14, 2019 [3 favorites]

For the arable land question, what Ive heard from the scientists that I work with is that a good assumption to work with is hot areas will get hotter, dry areas will get dryer, and wet areas will get wetter. What this means is that places that get their water from local rainfall will be fine (if they dont have flooding problems), but areas that require their water to be piped in (looking at you California's' central valley) will have significantly less local water, and probably less water in the canals as well as much higher water requirements since the plants they grow will need more water in the hotter weather (and all their neighbors farms will need more water too). Anyone growing anything in Southern California is going to get screwed in a major way.
posted by KeSetAffinityThread at 10:46 AM on February 14, 2019 [4 favorites]

Not buying it, when the town I lived in in Utah will be 227% wetter and warmer, while 40 miles to the south SLC will be much less wetter and more hot, then Provo 60 miles south of SLC will be much drier and hotter. They all drain the same mountains, the top two feed Great Salt Lake, Provo now feeds Utah Lake already and only the population needs will drive drought. The Utah figures are bunk.
posted by Oyéah at 10:50 AM on February 14, 2019 [1 favorite]

I can't figure out how to work this. All the cities appear to be in their normal spots. What am I doing wrong?
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 11:02 AM on February 14, 2019 [1 favorite]

Oh, I figure it out....I thought that side thing was just asking for donations.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 11:03 AM on February 14, 2019

I don't trust this map. I selected Miami, and the 60 year "what will it feel like" estimate didn't say "underwater".
posted by caution live frogs at 11:06 AM on February 14, 2019 [12 favorites]

There was a typically idiotic discussion in the comments of the local paper. We just got nearly a foot of snow. We've had some real cold days. Blah². The Gulf of Maine is warming, a bit, lobsters are moving north, a bit. Our previous mini-Trump governor is gone, and Maine now has a governor who wants to address the effects of Climate Change. Shreds of hope.
posted by theora55 at 11:10 AM on February 14, 2019 [2 favorites]

Exactly, caution live frogs; I figure Houston, New Orleans and other coastal cities will be flooded out of existence, so the weather will not be the deciding factor.

Surprised that DFW in TX will get *wetter* though we have had some record rainfalls. I wonder what that will mean for growing food, etc.
posted by emjaybee at 11:15 AM on February 14, 2019

Actually, I think the Michigan totals--at least by the lakeshore-- are pretty inaccurate and don't seem to take into account lake-effect snow. There is no way in hell that Chester PA (12in snow per year) is 43.9% wetter in winter than Holland, MI (76 in snow per year). While warmer temperatures will probably mean less lake effect precipitation, these figures indicate a drop of more than 10 in/year over year in the next 60 years, which doesn' t seem likely.
posted by Chrischris at 11:18 AM on February 14, 2019 [1 favorite]

Canada makes out like a bandit as far as I can tell. I mean, it's not going to be pretty when it happens no matter where you are, but if climate were a person we look to be getting normal-guy-with-a-big-nose while the US is getting the elephant man with nice teeth.
posted by Quindar Beep at 11:34 AM on February 14, 2019

I don't trust this map. I selected Miami, and the 60 year "what will it feel like" estimate didn't say "underwater".

NOAA has an app for that. (Home page, direct link to map)

They have a specific "scenario" projection for Miami for a number of different temperature models.
posted by bonehead at 11:53 AM on February 14, 2019 [1 favorite]

I’ve been thinking a lot about this study since I first read it a couple days ago... In the midst of cutting down all our ash trees due to the emerald ash borer, Minneapolis is starting to recommend replanting with some zone 5 trees (we are currently zone 4). There’s an annual tree lottery for homeowners, and this year one of the trees winners can select is a “dawn redwood” tree. My mind boggles at the idea of planting a Chinese redwood tree in Minnesota, but times/climates are a changing. (I’m trying to win a blue beech tree because I’m still rooting for native species)
posted by Maarika at 11:56 AM on February 14, 2019 [4 favorites]

I don't trust this map. I selected Miami, and the 60 year "what will it feel like" estimate didn't say "underwater".

I also clicked on Miami to see how bad it was going to be. Consider that its 2100 climate equivalent is basically central-American-rainforest, and that the average temperature will be eleven degrees warmer than it is today. It isn't going to matter if the city is underwater or not; the entire peninsula is going to be uninhabitable.
posted by Mayor West at 11:56 AM on February 14, 2019 [1 favorite]

I have a feeling that Houston is going to be both wetter and drier. Rivers of atmospheric moisture are going to blow in from the hotter Gulf. Intense heat waves will dry stuff out and bake it dead. The summers are going to resemble what Queensland is seeing right now, with terrible floods providing the cure for a killing drought. Will trees die, like they did in 2011, and then bayous rise, like in 2017?
posted by Midnight Skulker at 12:10 PM on February 14, 2019 [1 favorite]

This connects with yesterday's post on native plants for suburban yards. The goal now is to use plants from as close to your home as possible but as Maarika observed above we should also consider species from further south. This could be especially important where there is a large obstruction to natural spread whether geographic or man-made. The problem I see though is that while average temperatures rise the lowest temperatures don't. We have had colder winter extremes in the last two years than I ever remember. And plant hardiness is partly determined by resistance to cold temperatures. I would like to see work on which species should be helped to shift so that the wildlife that depends on it can move.
posted by Botanizer at 12:13 PM on February 14, 2019 [5 favorites]

Houston will be 5.8F hotter (which seems rough, but doable) and 20% wetter (which holy crap).

A good example of how even small increases in average temps result in a big increase in extreme heat episodes. That +5.8F degree average extends the bell curve of days over 100 degrees, which is expected to quadruple in much of Texas by 2100 (~105 more days above 95 degrees). That'll be accompanied by a 1.5- to 6-foot rise in average sea levels. Galveston is underwater at the 5-foot average mark. Doesn't help that Galveston and Houston are sinking ~2 inches/year, with parts of Harris County 12 feet lower than in 1920. The humid, hot temps will also favor vector-borne diseases that are currently non-existent in the region. So, all that plus a bunch of other unpleasantries summarized in the National Climate Assessment.
posted by prinado at 12:13 PM on February 14, 2019 [4 favorites]

There's a bit of a problem here if you start relatively far south. In the 2080 scenario Atlanta is supposed to feel like Saraland, AL (on the Gulf Coast). But Nashville is also supposed to feel like Saraland. That doesn't seem quite right. (Lots of other places get pointed to the Gulf Coast.) I assume the problem is that nowhere in the US has a climate like what Atlanta or Nashville will feel like in 2080 in both rainfall and temperature - the "climate similarity map" backs this up.

The same problem occurs if you start with Chicago and Minneapolis-St. Paul (they both point to Lansing, Kansas - although for Chicago you get a summer comparison and for Minneapolis-St. Paul you get a winter comparison). I suspect they just figured people would click on the place they live and call it a day.

It's an interesting idea but it falls apart when you start clicking around because they're trying to deal with two variables and also keep everything within the US. I think most people have a better sense of temperature variations than precipitation variations. They probably should just say "Chicago will be hot as Memphis is now, and Minneapolis will be as hot as Kansas City" and find a different way to handle precipitation.
posted by madcaptenor at 1:16 PM on February 14, 2019 [1 favorite]

Like Botanizer points out, one of the big problems with moving plants/animals to help survive climate change is that they might not be able to survive where we move them yet or they might not be able to survive there long enough to reproduce.

There's a bunch of research about that under the topics "assisted migration" (e.g. this Canadian trial for forest tree species) and "assisted gene flow" if you want more.
posted by congen at 1:27 PM on February 14, 2019 [2 favorites]

1816 was known as The Year Without a Summer, or "Eighteen Hundred and Froze To Death." Winter went into July, crops failed all around the world, and famine ensued, thanks to the eruption of Mt. Tambora.

Worldwide temperature averages were 0.7–1.3 °F below normal.

The point is: People really underestimate the catastrophic difference a few degrees of average temperature can represent.
posted by argybarg at 1:48 PM on February 14, 2019 [15 favorites]

There's a bit of a problem here if you start relatively far south.

Yeah, the limited number and location of cities they're considering means that they can't always find good analogues, even if they do exist somewhere on earth. That's why I'm glad they included the climate similarity map.

>“The best match is not necessarily a good match.” Depending on the analogue pool, amount of climate change, and particular decision framework you use, you may find that the best climate analogue is nothing like the actual climate. If I’m picking my pants from the kids section, the biggest ones are the best fit, but I can still only get one leg in them! (source)

I'm really glad that they included multiple climate variables instead of just sticking with temperature or precipitation or trying to show them separately. Separating out climate variables when talking about climate similarity often gives meaningless and wrong answers and usually doesn't even make sense.

I work adjacent to this field and I was pleased to see the authors of this tool used the current state-of-the-art for determining climate dis/similarity, developed by Colin Mahony that really accounts for considering multiple climate variables.

Calculating how similar climates are is a REALLY complex question. prinado gets at it a little bit upthread when they point out that any climate variable, like temperature or precip, is actually a distribution thru time and not a point. It's also really important to talk about climate dissimilarity incorporating more than one climate variable because your ecosystem and experience of the climate is really dependent on combinations of climate variables - though exactly which variables depends on whether you're a person or a tree or an ant or whatever. You also want to keep track of multiple variables simultaneously because "dependencies between climate variables can produce larger and earlier departures from natural variability than is detectable in individual variables". For example - a common climate pattern for some places is that warmer years tend to be drier years and cooler years tend to be wetter years. Under climate change, that relationship might break and warmer years might be wetter or cooler years might be drier. That has a very dramatically different feel (and effect on ecosystems) than just getting warmer and drier or cooler and wetter.

In their paper they discuss novel climates, though I feel like the "for the public" map downplays them. (A reasonable choice given their relatively small analogue pool, but perhaps misleading, especially since the default is to not show the climate similarity map.)

Another paper by Colin Mahony (the person who came up with the sigma-dissimilarity metric used to determine climate similarity) does what the map shared in this post does, but for British Columbian forests and focusing on areas that lack good analogues ("novel climates"). [paper, blog post about paper]
posted by congen at 2:48 PM on February 14, 2019 [3 favorites]

Arable land is not nearly as mobile as cities. Many summer temps are near the upper limits for grain productivity. Big challenges ahead.
posted by Anchorite_of_Palgrave at 3:18 PM on February 14, 2019 [3 favorites]

> Canada makes out like a bandit as far as I can tell. I mean, it's not going to be pretty when it happens no matter where you are, but if climate were a person we look to be getting normal-guy-with-a-big-nose while the US is getting the elephant man with nice teeth.

Well, maybe. I feel confident predicting that there will be a US invasion of Canada at some point this century because they can keep on buying our water until it runs out but as others in this thread have pointed out you can't ship arable land or a bearable climate.
posted by The Card Cheat at 3:52 PM on February 14, 2019

In the 2080 scenario Atlanta is supposed to feel like Saraland, AL (on the Gulf Coast). But Nashville is also supposed to feel like Saraland. That doesn't seem quite right. (Lots of other places get pointed to the Gulf Coast.) I assume the problem is that nowhere in the US has a climate like what Atlanta or Nashville will feel like in 2080 in both rainfall and temperature - the "climate similarity map" backs this up.

It makes sense to me. I have been to (and worked outside in!) Mobile and New Orleans in July so I know what they're getting at. Summer temps in the 90s with 90% humidity is not that common in the US now, whereas it will be much more common soon. So, right now, all of us in the southeast all being pointed to a small area that has the weather that we will soon all have to deal with.
posted by hydropsyche at 5:22 PM on February 14, 2019 [2 favorites]

Part of why 1816 was so bad is that volcanic ash in the atmosphere blocked sunshine, so it was cold, and plants did not get the sun they needed. Canada grows a lot of wheat; I imagine they will grow even more as their summer lengthens. I kind of look at the map and shift livability north (here in the Northern Hemisphere). The Southern Hemisphere has a whole lot more ocean to absorb heat, though Australia is certainly suffering with heat.

Predictions are getting a lot of attention, and it's dawning on a lot of people that we're in big trouble. I kind of wonder if that's one reason for the attraction to authoritarian leaders; they're more popular in scary times. For this particular crisis, the authoritarian leader we got is specifically horrible.
posted by theora55 at 5:28 PM on February 14, 2019

Canada warming means that forests which have so far been resistant to pests, might become much more vulnerable. My forestry colleagues are currently praying that the sub -20C cold snap in the prairie provinces lasts as every day kills more of the invasive pine beetle larvae. Boreal forests need to be boreal, not temperate.
posted by bonehead at 6:38 PM on February 14, 2019 [1 favorite]

A spectre is haunting the world, the spectre of climate change.

It will take a large number of people to increase and shift agricultural production in a changing climate, while also combating desertification, protecting and uniting abused and fragmented natural habitats, building better rain and melt-water management and irrigation systems, to transition from chemical pest control and petroleum fueled fertilizer agriculture that is destroying insects, salting and acidifying soils and poisoning our eaters to more labor intensive but sustainable organic agriculture. So many efficient homes to build in the new further inland and pole-ward cities. So much renewable infrasctructure to deploy, so much waste to recycle, so many trees to plant, so much land to cultivate.

If only there was a large pool of people who already have exeperience in a variety of climates and methods of agriculture and construction who are eager to escape the dangers of the political, military and climatic crises our failed systems have produced. People who need safe-harbor, gainful employment, a new purpose and community, and the hope that their temporary or permanent relocation will not be a prison sentence or a death sentence.

No walls but sea walls.

Farmers of the world unite, we have only our chemicals to lose, and a world to feed.
posted by Anchorite_of_Palgrave at 8:30 PM on February 14, 2019

Another useful aspect of this map: it tells you who would have to move to your area to continue their way of life and agriculture. Of course, olympia washington maps to the the hills around CA central valley. The salish sea shore is going to get awfully crowded.
posted by Anchorite_of_Palgrave at 8:35 PM on February 14, 2019 [1 favorite]

While this is fun, I'm pretty certain that only the temperature part should be taken as anything tangentially related to reality and, even that, with a huge grain of salt. The precipitation stuff seems pulled out of thin air (hah).

For instance, Los Angeles is compared to Las Palmas, Mexico which is 80% drier than Los Angeles. So that would indicate that L.A. would become a pure desert with very, very little precipitation. But San Clemente, maybe 50 miles to the southeast, is "predicted" to be 0.2% wetter. Riverside, 50 miles to the east is predicted to be... 513% wetter! Simi Valley, 50 miles to the northwest is predicted to get... 1900% wetter and, I assume, turn into Dagobah while Thousand Oaks *which is literally adjacent to Simi Valley* only gets 37% wetter. I guess Simi Valley is sucking down all the moisture despite being slightly more inland.

So Los Angeles itself becomes a boneyard of parched hellscape while areas less than 50 miles away in any direction either stay the same, get a bit wetter, get a ton wetter, or turn into a festering swamp of torrential monsoons.

I think maybe this is meant to raise awareness rather than be any kind of rigorous model.
posted by Justinian at 3:28 AM on February 15, 2019

My area will only be 9 degrees hotter and a little drier. Buy Northern Ohio real estate now I guess.
posted by greatalleycat at 9:11 AM on February 15, 2019

I think maybe this is meant to raise awareness rather than be any kind of rigorous model.

This is a rigorous model and they aren't pulling precipitation "out of thin air."

Some of the criticism and confusion here are resolved by turning on the "Line and climate similarity map" under "Select a map type" in the sidebar.

The map answers two questions and uses different visuals to do it. For example, consider Vancouver.

1) The line tells me "of the places included, Seattle's current climate is most similar to what Vancouver's will be in 2080"
2) The colored pixels (blue) in the climate similarity map tell me "Seattle's current climate is a bad match for Vancouver's 2080 climate"

The most important thing to remember when playing with this tool is that the best match isn't always a good match.

madcaptenor is right when they point out - I assume the problem is that nowhere in the US has a climate like what Atlanta or Nashville will feel like in 2080 in both rainfall and temperature - the "climate similarity map" backs this up.

It's easy to misunderstand the model output and the context they give for it. (Which is fair! It's complicated and I don't think they made the best decisions for visualizing!) I'm going to go through a paragraph in a comment above not to bash on the commenter but because I think it gives a lot of helpful examples for understanding how to interpret the model and what's tricky about it.

Los Angeles is compared to Las Palmas, Mexico which is 80% drier than Los Angeles. So that would indicate that L.A. would become a pure desert with very, very little precipitation.

It's true that Las Palmas is most similar to what we expect LA 2080 to be like. But if you turn on the climate similarity map, you'll see that it's just a big blue pixel. What that means is that of all the places they considered, there is none that looks at all like what LA will in 2080. That's useful and terrifying information. The best match is a bad match.

But San Clemente, maybe 50 miles to the southeast, is "predicted" to be 0.2% wetter.

No, it isn't. The climate in San Clemente 2080 is predicted to be most similar to Downey's climate today and Downey's winters are very slightly wetter than San Clemente's. Also, the climate similarity map shows that it's a poor match. Not as bad as LA and Las Palmas, but not good.

Riverside, 50 miles to the east is predicted to be... 513% wetter!

No it isn't. Riverside 2080 is most similar to Miguel Alemán today. Miguel Alemán today is 513.1% wetter in summer than Riverside. Riverside 2080 and Miguel Alemán today have moderately similar climates.

Simi Valley, 50 miles to the northwest is predicted to get... 1900% wetter and I assume, turn into Dagobah,

Simi Valley 2080 is predicted to be most like Loreto, Mexico today, which is 1900.5% wetter in summer than Simi Valley is today. The similarity is low, however.

Also, a summer precip increase from 0.14 to 2.66 inches is significant, but not exactly wet.

while Thousand Oaks *which is literally adjacent to Simi Valley* only gets 37% wetter

Thousand Oaks 2080 is most like current Boyle Heights, which is 37% wetter than Thousand Oaks in the summer. The similarity is moderate/moderately low.

(Also, percentages and rainfall numbers can be tricky to interpret, especially when amounts of rainfall are small. This is why we put them on a log scale usually. Consider: Thousand Oaks currently gets 1.5 inches of rain in the summer (on average). So, it is currently already 1000% wetter than Simi Valley. Local topographic effects on climate are AMAZING. An increase of 37% would put it at 2.055 - but that is NOT what the model is saying will happen.)

I think one of the big failings of the map (but not the paper) is that the map asks you to focus on comparison, while a lot of what this is about is that there AREN'T good comparisons for most places at high emissions levels, even if we look at a huge proportion of North America. Figure 3 in the paper shows this. (The triangles are places that have reasonable analogues and the circles are varying degrees of really fucking different from anything we've got now.)

This issue of "novel" climates is enormous and very challenging. It means that we'll really struggle to plan for the future because even if we're right about what that future looks like, we don't have any experience with the conditions we expect.

It's not as totally hopeless as this might look at first

1) Climate similarity measures change based on your problem and the climate variables you include. Like trees really care about how cold it gets in the winter, but corn doesn't. You've only got to include growing season climate variables in your corn growing climate similarity maps!

The fewer climate variables needed, the more likely we are to find an analogue.

2) Some of these novel climates are not globally novel. We can expand our pool of analogue climates and learn from people and ecosystems in those further away analogues.
posted by congen at 9:36 AM on February 15, 2019 [4 favorites]

their summer lengthens

It's not that their summer lengthens though, it's that things get warmer and stay hotter for longer. The angle of the sun over the course of the seasons isn't affected by climate change, so even if the growing season gets longer in terms of temperature, it's still unlikely that you get e.g. two growing seasons in Saskatoon out of the deal.
posted by aspersioncast at 10:16 AM on February 16, 2019 [1 favorite]

Well, maybe. I feel confident predicting that there will be a US invasion of Canada at some point this century because they can keep on buying our water until it runs out but as others in this thread have pointed out you can't ship arable land or a bearable climate.

Perhaps Canada is the country that should be thinking about building a wall.
posted by ambulocetus at 5:02 PM on February 20, 2019