Climate Change Could Make Dallas Feel Like Estelle

If emissions continue being emitted at their current rates, climate change could make Dallas-Fort Worth feel more like Estelle, Louisiana, in 2080, where the typical winter is 8.5 degrees warmer. And even if humans manage to significantly reduce emissions, Dallas' climate could still feel more like Laplace, Lousiana.

That’s according to new research by the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, which on Tuesday unveiled a new web application and study aimed at showing the public just how much climate change will impact major U.S. Cities. The scientists analyzed 540 urban areas in the United States and Canada. Combined, the cities analyzed have about 250 million residents.

The researchers mapped the similarity between the future and current climate using a dozen measures, including minimum and maximum temperature and precipitation during all four seasons.

And despite what you might hear from climate change deniers in the Trump administration these days, the findings should be alarming. At current high emissions rates, New York will feel more like Jonesboro, Arkansas. Washington, D.C. will feel more like Paragould, Arkansas. And Chicago will feel more like Lansing, Kansas.

Moreover, many cities could see climates with “no modern equivalent” in North America, study author Matt Fitzpatrick said in a release.

“Within the lifetime of children living today, the climate of many regions is projected to change from the familiar to conditions unlike those experienced in the same place by their parents, grandparents, or perhaps any generation in millennia,” he said.

The researchers mapped climate differences under two emissions trajectories: unmitigated emissions and mitigated emissions. Unmitigated emissions, the authors wrote, is the scenario most in line with what might be expected given current policies and how fast global leaders respond. Mitigated emissions, on the other hand, assumes policies are implemented to limit emissions. This includes those in the Paris agreement, which President Donald Trump pulled the United States out of in June 2017.

The study is a stark reminder of the uphill battle humanity faces. Even with limits on emissions, the climate in North America’s urban areas will still feel significantly different. And in many places, the climate will still feel completely foreign from what it is today in the Western Hemisphere and north of the equator.

If emissions continue unabated, climates in urban areas will become, on average, most like the contemporary climate of places about 500 miles away, mainly to the south. Fitzpatrick said he hopes the tool will help make the reality of climate change more relatable.

“We can use this technique to translate a future forecast into something we can better conceptualize and link to our own experiences,” he said. “It’s my hope that people have that ‘wow’ moment, and it sinks in for the first time the scale of the changes we’re expecting in a single generation.”

Patch national staffer Dan Hampton contributed to this report.

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