Environmental Defense Fund: Climate Report - Life in a Very Different United States
Today’s post is by Lisa Moore, a climate scientist at EDF.
NOAA recently released a terrific scientific report that explains, in plain English, the current and projected effects of climate change on the U.S. The nonpartisan report, prepared by the 13-agency U.S. Global Change Research Program, tells a grim but important story, clearly and with lots of powerful maps and charts. I encourage you to check it out to see how climate change will affect your area of the country.
Here are some of the “business-as-usual” projections that my colleagues and I find most striking and disturbing:
You think August is hot now?
By the end of this century, we could be in for much more severe summers all across the country (see maps that follow).
- If you live in New Hampshire, summer could feel like it does today in North Carolina (p.107).
- If you live in Michigan, brace yourself for summers that feel like today’s summers in Oklahoma (p 117).
- And if you live in Texas, you now experience 10 to 20 days a year over 100 °F. By the last two decades of this century, look for 100 such days - that’s more than three months (p. 90).
