(Inside Science) — In 60 years, the climate of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, will feel kind of like a contemporary Jonesboro, Arkansas, with higher temperatures and more winter precipitation, according to a new study. That’s assuming fossil fuel emissions continue to rise; if instead we succeed in curbing emissions, Pittsburgh will instead become more like Madison, Indiana.
Pittsburgh is one of 540 cities in the U.S. and Canada for which scientists have found doppelgangers of their climate futures — places where the recent climate is as close as possible to another city’s future climate. Anyone can explore the findings using an online interactive map. The results were published today in the journal Nature Communications.
The researchers compared each city’s expected climate in the 2080s with recorded climates from 1960-1990. To estimate future climates, they took the average of outputs from 27 climate models. Each recent and future climate was characterized by total ...
