Tag: climate change

How Climate Change Will Transform the United States

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

ProPublica map

ProPublica has released a series of climate maps showing the impact of warming temperatures, rising seas and changes in rainfall on the United States. “Taken with other recent research showing that the most habitable climate in North America will shift northward and the incidence of large fires will increase across the country, this suggests that the climate crisis will profoundly interrupt the way we live and farm in the United States. See how the North American places where humans have lived for thousands of years will shift and what changes are in store for your county.”

Mapping the California Heat Wave

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
NASA Earth Observatory: California Heatwave 2020
NASA Earth Observatory (Joshua Stevens)

NASA Earth Observatory: “The map above shows air temperatures across the United States on September 6, 2020, when much of the Southwest roasted in a dramatic heatwave. The map was derived from the Goddard Earth Observing System (GEOS) model and represents temperatures at 2 meters (about 6.5 feet) above the ground. The darkest red areas are where the model shows temperatures surpassing 113°F (45°C).” Heat waves in southern California have become “more frequent, intense, and longer-lasting,” the article goes on to say.

Monitoring the Arctic Heat Wave

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Extreme temperatures in Eureka
ESA/Copernicus Sentinel (CC licence)

The European Space Agency has a post about monitoring the Arctic heat wave (mainly, it seems, through the Copernicus program). It’s illustrated by a few startling images from this summer: of Siberia’s wildfires, the record-low levels of Arctic sea ice, and (above) a map showing the land surface temperatures on Ellesmere Island, Nunavut on 11 August, when Eureka, Nunavut—80° N—had a record high of 21.9°C (71.4°F).

The Washington Post Maps Wildlife Corridors in Wyoming

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Washington Post
Washington Post

Last month the Washington Post published a feature on the impact of Interstate 80 on wildlife migrations in Wyoming, and how climate change would affect animals’ ability to move to new habitat as their usual stomping grounds are made unsuitable by global warming. The print version (above) and online version have related maps—one static, one dynamic—that illustrate wildlife paths and how they are stymied by the highway, as well as places where overpasses and tunnels might help. [Lauren Tierney]

Tom Patterson’s Map of Prince William Sound

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Prince William Sound
Tom Patterson

Tom Patterson’s projects are always worthy of note. His latest is a wall map of Alaska’s Prince William Sound—a physical relief map that, Tom warns, will very soon be out of date:

Prince William Sound turned out being the most laborious map that I have ever made. The culprit: climate change. Although much of the data that went into making the map was of recent vintage, glaciers in the region have melted noticeably these last few years.

Updating physical features—glaciers, coastlines, rivers, and lakes—from recent satellite images took up ninety percent of my time. Nevertheless, the completed map is only a snapshot in time. Columbia Glacier, for example, lost another one kilometer of its length during the summer of 2019. Much of what the map depicts will be out-of-date again before too long.

It can be downloaded, printed (it’s 44 × 36 inches) and modified free of charge.

Mapping Canadians’ Attitude Towards Climate Change

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Screenshot of interactive map of Canadian public opinion on climate change
Screenshot

Researchers have released an interactive map showing Canadians’ opinions about climate change—whether it’s happening, and what we should do about it—and, more significantly, the regional variations in that opinion, down to the riding level. Not surprisingly, the oil- and coal-producing regions are much more likely to be climate skeptics.

The map is based on surveys of more than 9,000 Canadians taken between 2011 and 2018, which raised my eyebrows a bit: public opinion can change a lot over seven or eight years, after all. But the researchers did so to get a more accurate sense of regional opinion: opinion polls are usually based on a small national sample; regional breakdowns of that sample have large margins of error, and getting accurate regional samples would be a lot more expensive. More at Global News.

Beyond the Two-Degree Limit

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Washington Post: Temperature change map
Washington Post

Two degrees Celsius. That’s the redline. The average global temperature increase we need to keep below, according to the 2015 Paris Agreement. But as the Washington Post points out in two heavily mapped stories—one for the United States, one for the entire world—that show the change in average temperatures since the late 1800s, there are places on the planet that have already blown past that two-degree limit. [Maps Mania]

Himalayan Ice Loss Measured with Cold War Spy Photos

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

nepal-sikkim in 1975 by glaciers on Sketchfab

Satellite imagery only goes back so far. To measure the rate of ice loss across the Himalayan glaciers, researchers turned to recently declassified spy satellite photos from 1975. The photos were used to create a digital elevation model (above) which was compared with more recent data. They concluded that the rate of ice loss was accelerating: it was twice as much from 2000 to 2016 than it was from 1975 to 2000. Columbia University, Science News. [Geography Realm]

Mapping Carbon Dioxide Emissions: Worldmapper’s Cartograms

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

From last April: Worldmapper’s cartograms showing where in the world CO2 emissions are coming from, both in terms of overall emissions (by area) and per capita (colour). China, the U.S. and India are the largest emitters, but on a per capita basis the U.S. emits twice as much CO2 as China and eight times as much as India. Additional cartograms looking at the increase or decline in CO2 emissions (from 1990 to 2015) show increases mainly in China and the rest of Asia, and declines in Europe and the former Soviet bloc (a lot of the latter due to post-Soviet deindustrialization).

Five New Islands Charted Off Novaya Zemlya

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Climate change means retreating glaciers, which exposes new islands, which means new maps. BBC News reports that five new islands off the northeast coast of Novaya Zemlya, an archipelago in the Russian Arctic that was the site of hundreds of nuclear tests, were mapped by a Russian expedition. The islands were discovered in satellite photos by then-student Marina Migunova, now a naval oceanographic engineer.

Previously: New Map of Greenland and the European Arctic.

Mapping the Flow of Antarctic Ice

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
UC Irvine/Jeremie Mouginot

This is a map of Antarctic surface ice velocity: the speed at which glaciers flow. It was produced by researchers at the University of California Irvine and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, using radar interferometry and multiple satellite passes to produce a map 10 times more accurate than previous maps. More: UCI News, Geophysical Research Letters.

New Map of Greenland and the European Arctic

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
British Antarctic Survey

The British Antarctic Survey—which despite its name focuses its attention on both polar regions—has released a new one-sheet map of Greenland and the European Arctic. The 1:4,000,000-scale map covers a region from Baffin Island to Novaya Zemlya to Scotland: a region that’s usually on the edges of maps of the Arctic and Europe rather than getting its own map. More importantly, it’s a very recent snapshot of a rapidly changing region: the retreating ice sheet in Greenland is revealing new landscapes. The map costs £12 and is available either folded or rolled from Stanfords and the Scott Polar Research Institute. [BBC]

The Earth’s Climate Zones Are Shifting

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Climate change is redrawing the map, writes Nicola Jones in a piece for Yale Environment 360 last October. It’s not just about polar ice caps, she writes: “Sometimes, the lines on the map can literally be redrawn: the line of where wheat will grow, or where tornadoes tend to form, where deserts end, where the frozen ground thaws, and even where the boundaries of the tropics lie.” Her article is punctuated by maps showing the changes in Earth’s climate zones, some of which dramatically and in a short period of time.

The Climate Atlas of Canada

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

The Climate Atlas of Canada’s interactive map shows the future impact of climate change in Canada. It shows what a number of different weather variables—temperature, number of very hot or very cold days, precipitation, growing season, and so forth—would be under two potential scenarios: one high-carbon, one low-carbon. There’s a lot of data hidden behind a lot of menus; the legends are hidden behind dialog boxes as well. [CBC News]