Find Your City's 2080 Climate Change Twin

Want to know what the weather will feel like after climate change takes hold? There might be a hotter and drier place already on the planet that can offer clues.

1 minute read

February 13, 2019, 10:00 AM PST

By James Brasuell @CasualBrasuell


Phoenix Dust Storm

Alan Stark / flickr

Robinson Meyer shares news of a new paper and interactive tool that attempts to reveal the climate change twin cities of places in the United States and North America—that is, "the city whose modern-day weather gives the best clue to what conditions will feel like in 2080."

"[The paper] finds that global warming will be like relocating American cities more than 500 miles away from their current location, on average, mostly to the south and toward the country’s interior," according to Meyer.

For instance, the Philadelphia of 2080 will feel like the Memphis of 2019, and the Memphis of 2080, in turn, will feel like the College Station of 2019.

One of the researchers on the paper is quoted in the article saying "everything gets warmer." Some places also get drier. Still other places will feel nothing at all like any place in the present.

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