Wednesday, October 28, 2020

The Future U.S. Climate Explorer

Climate Explorer is a new online tool which has been designed to show how the climate in the USA in projected to change over the course of the 21st century. The website is a joint project from NOAA and the University of North Carolina Asheville. The Climate Explorer uses historical climate data and two different climate change models to show how the climate is likely to change in every county in the United States.

Climate Explorer allows users to view maps of observed and projected climate variables for every county in the contiguous United States. It allows you to explore how climate variables, such as temperature and precipitation, are predicted to change using two distinct future climate models. One of these models projects climate change in a future where significant attempts have been made to reduce global emissions of heat-trapping gases. The other shows how the climate is projected to change if the rate of global emissions continues to rise.

The 'Maps' section of the Climate Explorer allows you to view before and after interactive maps of a number of different climate variables. For example you can view the current average temperature across the United States side-by-side with the predicted average temperatures for the year 2090 - in order to see how temperatures will rise due to global heating. Other climate variables which you can see mapped include the number of extreme heat days and precipitation levels. 

If you select a county on the map you can also explore charts of the different climate variables to see how the localized climate could change during the course of this century under the two different future climate projections used by the Climate Explorer. 

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