I’ve recently completed a new resource that explores and categorizes the extreme climates that will occur in the future if we continue on a high emissions scenario
Posted by Fast-Armadillo1074@reddit | collapse | View on Reddit | 24 comments
I’ve created https://www.dickinsonclimate.com, a handcoded website that explores in detail the climates that SSP8.5 would cause during the 2011-2040, 2041-2070, and 2071-2100 periods, and also for comparison the climates of the 1981-2010 normals baseline. The focus of the site is on a new climate classification system I have created in order to categorize all extreme climates that may occur in the future due to climate change.
In the graphs page, I have the climates of hundreds of different locations representing specific climates and/or population centers representing different regions: https://www.dickinsonclimate.com/graphs.html. If your location is not on the map, feel free to comment and I can reply with a graph of your climate in 2071-2100 or some other normals period.
Hopefully this resource will be helpful and interesting. Let me know any thoughts you have about it.
To be clear to the mods I am not trying to sell anything but simply share a resource. Citations can be found in the about page of the website.
WormLivesMatter@reddit
Very cool. Can you add definitions in a tab for the classifications.
Fast-Armadillo1074@reddit (OP)
What do you mean exactly?
WormLivesMatter@reddit
I was mostly thinking for the hyperthermal summer and the similar term for equatorial. Maybe just a note before those maps to define those terms instead of in a new tab.
Fast-Armadillo1074@reddit (OP)
My workspace:
trivetsandcolanders@reddit
Thanks for sharing. It’s genuinely terrifying seeing the possibility that huge swaths of land could have “hyperthermal” winters and summers by 2070-2100.
Fast-Armadillo1074@reddit (OP)
As I note in the small text I put at the bottom of all my charts, the 1981-2010 normals are CHELSA v2.1, not measured station observations, in order to have methodological consistency with the CHELSA-downscaled projections. Therefore my 1981-2010 CHELSA normals will not perfectly match station observations and station observations can be expected to be more accurate on a local level.
Additionally, the resolution of the data is in 30 arc second pixels. That means that if the pixel data is averaging the temperatures of a city such as Ushuaia and the mountains next to it in the same pixel, it may show up as colder.
ItilityMSP@reddit
Good resource now the next step is figuring out what happens with AMOC collapse because North America and Europe are definitely going to be affected by that as well. And my intuition says it will change the hyper climate extremes especially for traditional equatorial climates as less heat will be transported to the poles.
Now whether this can happen before 2100, that's the real debate, and if it happens sooner than 2060, it will definitely have an effect within years. Good News is ice caps will rebound, bad news is the most populated areas will be unliveable.
Hour-Stable2050@reddit
I don’t know. With the way things are going I’m starting to wonder if southern Ontario will be stuck in a polar vortex most of the time.
StatementBot@reddit
The following submission statement was provided by /u/Fast-Armadillo1074:
I have spent a year working on a resource that explores exactly what a high emissions scenario looks like at a localized level. I was not able to find localized temperature and percipitation charts for future projections, so I created my own using peer reviewed data.
Similarly, I realized that my own hometown, while classified as humid subtropical by Köppen in 2071-2100 high emissions maps, would be more like a “humid Phoenix” than any climate that exists today, so I created my own classification system in order to clearly identify and describe the extreme climates of the future.
To quote my zenodo paper formalizing the system: Under strong anthropogenic warming, Earth is expected to enter climatic regimes with no present-day analogues, characterized by combinations of thermal and hydrological conditions not historically observed. Classification systems calibrated to modern Earth climate distributions perform well for climates resembling those present at the time of their formulation, but can yield misleading classifications under novel conditions. For example, a hypothetical location with constant rainfall and identical monthly mean temperatures to present-day Phoenix, Arizona would be classified as humid subtropical (Cfa) under Köppen, despite occupying a far more thermodynamically extreme regime than locations such as Tokyo or Atlanta. The Dickinson Climate Classification is designed to address this limitation, providing a framework for tracking climate regime transitions under strong warming, identifying emergent climates with no modern analog, transitions under strong warming, and comparing paleoclimactic and future states within a single classification scheme.
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1spery1/ive_recently_completed_a_new_resource_that/ogzxazp/
Bandits101@reddit
“…….under strong anthropogenic warming”. Your scenarios have very little to do with humans any longer. Most carbon sinks are reversing, positive feedback loops are manifesting nearly everywhere.
Ice melt from glaciers and polar ice shelves are shedding 300 billions tons of ice annually. Earth’s carbon cycle dictates what occurs from now on, CO2 remains in the atmosphere for approximately 100,000 years.
There is much, much more to unfold as the climate relentlessly reacts to increased and increasing GHG’s, ocean acidification and level rise and warming. Soils will die and release their stored carbon. Eventually oceans will become a carbon source in place of sequestration..
It is absolutely naive to propose that reducing emissions will have any effect on future climate. There is nothing that be done to dissipate the excess heat humanity has caused the planet to absorb and continues to absorb.
The sudden release of GHG’s over the past several hundred years, will remain until Earths natural carbon cycle deals with them. I don’t care if a hundred billion solar panels and wind turbines power everything. The die is cast.
ArgonathDW@reddit
I mostly agree with you, and it’s long-shot odds of happening, but is there really just zero chance for effective carbon sequestration technology to emerge? Idk much about it, so I actually don’t know if that’s a dumb question to ask. If we’re already locked-in for doomsday, what should us peons do? What are your plans for yourself?
CorvidCorbeau@reddit
The technology exists but scaling is where it starts to overcome our abilities. We can sequester a few million tons of CO2 per year. Fantastic...we emit around 45,000 million tons per year, then natural carbon sources add another few billion.
Can we scale things up over 1000x while not increasing emissions at all? I don't think so. The material costs and logistics are just too much.
Since we can't rapidly reduce greenhouse gases in the atmoaphere, warming will continue. Whether we continue to emit this much or more annually or reduce emissions does not stop warming, it only slows it down.
Bandits101@reddit
I have no plans mostly because I’m old and won’t care when I’m dead, for me I suppose it’s c’est la guerre. I don’t know the short term scenarios for any individual location.
Changes I think will be mostly non linear, unequal and mostly unpredictable but change for the worse (in the long term) for higher forms of life, is inevitable.
Mostly, catastrophic scenarios will unfold on a geological time frame and we have past warming epochs to broadly predict the future. The very, very worst would be oceans becoming anoxic, as once occurred.
Sea level rise, acidification and warming will be ongoing for millennia. The initial adverse effects will be salt ingress in major food producing river deltas as levels rise. The bottom of the ocean food chain will decline and die, due to warmth and acidification.
kea1981@reddit
Not the best metaphor, but:
Can you return the water that evaporates out of your drinking glass while you blow bubbles through the straw long enough to melt the ice cubes back to the glass?
Will returning the evaporated water make the ice cubes form again?
No and no.
The technology may emerge to sequester the carbon, but reverse the warming? Nah, son. We're far past that.
Build community, learn skills, and live responsibly are what I think are the best moves are we plunge headlong down this path.
ElegantDaemon@reddit
And yet the billionaires who caused all this are walking around free, sailing their yachts around, supervising the bunkers they're building, and learning how to keep their security guards in line after money becomes meaningless.
kea1981@reddit
This is absolutely awesome!!! My hometown of South Lake Tahoe isn't one I would have expected you to include, but you did!!! That's so amazing! I've always thought it was an interesting site to reference, so thank you!!
Fast-Armadillo1074@reddit (OP)
Thanks! South Lake Tahoe was chosen because it’s one of the only places (especially in the American continents) in the 1981-2010 with my Dmb2 climate (temperate Mediterranean with cool summer).
kea1981@reddit
That's why I've always found it off it's not included in more climate maps! Always felt rather spiffy about that, but it seems I have the climate of Sacramento or Reno to look forward to in my retirement: lovely .
This is genuinely an amazing tool, thank you for sharing!
ItilityMSP@reddit
Can American's please use standard scientific units science? For the sake of all that is sane figure it out.
Fast-Armadillo1074@reddit (OP)
Sometime I need to figure out some way so the site defaults to Celsius or Fahrenheit depending on where the user is located.
The_Sex_Pistils@reddit
This is awesome. Thank you!
MeepersToast@reddit
I've been checking your site at least once a week since I first saw a post from you. It's so useful. Thanks so much for sharing
TheUpbeatCrow@reddit
This is an absolutely stunning, incredible resource. Thank you!
Fast-Armadillo1074@reddit (OP)
I have spent a year working on a resource that explores exactly what a high emissions scenario looks like at a localized level. I was not able to find localized temperature and percipitation charts, so I created my own using peer reviewed data.
Similarly, I realized that my own hometown, while classified as humid subtropical by Köppen in 2071-2100 high emissions maps, would be more like a “humid Phoenix” than any climate that exists today, so I created my own classification system in order to clearly identify and describe the extreme climates of the future.