See How Climate Change Will Affect Your City Over the Next 30 Years
Most of us are well aware that the Earth is getting warmer. But it’s often hard to imagine how that future will feel. Vox recently tried to put the scary statistics into context by visualizing how winters and summers in 1000 cities all over the U.S. will change over the next 30 years or so.
The infographic lets you type in the name of the city nearest you, then visualizes the change between the average summer high and winter low between 2000 and 2050. New York City, for instance, had a summer high of 83.1° F in 2000, but 30 years from now, in 2050, that number will rise to 87.9°F. Winter in the city will be warmer, too, rising from a 28.5°F low in 2000 to a 32.6°F low in 2050.
Those changes may not seem that big, but those are just averages, and don’t tell the full story. There will be more heat waves and other extreme weather events, more dramatic shifts from periods of rain to periods of drought, and other changes that go beyond mere temperatures. These changes will vary from city to city—northern areas are warming faster than southern ones—but overall, many cities will start to feel like their southern counterparts do today.
Within the Vox visualization, you can explore projections for how populations and temperatures will change in different cities, including the ones expected to warm the most and the least over the next 30 or so years. (Oakland is looking good right now, but you may not want to move to Fargo.) You can also see how each city’s year-long temperature and precipitation forecasts are expected to change month to month.
It’s a bleak reality. In addition to changing the weather, agriculture, animal populations, and natural landscapes, climate change will effect what world heritage sites you’ll still be able to see, what wine you’ll be able to drink, what trees you’ll be able to plant in your yard, and so much more.
Explore how your hometown could change over on Vox.