Mapping Where It’s Getting Hotter and Where It’s Not
Climate change hasn’t been consistent across the U.S., with temperatures warming more quickly along the edges than in the middle. That’s helping shape perceptions.
The East Coast has seen a bigger temperature rise than Oklahoma.
According to the sixth assessment report of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the first part of which was released this week to much fanfare, global average temperatures, currently about 1.1 degrees Celsius over the “pre-industrial” (1850 to 1900) baseline, will pass the threshold of 1.5 degrees over the baseline sometime in the early 2030s.
It’s a safe bet that this will in fact happen. The climate models developed in the 1970s and 1980s have done a fairly good job of forecasting the trajectory of global average temperatures since then. If you correct for early errors in estimating how much carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases would be emitted, they’ve done a great job. The latest IPCC assessment reflects continued improvement in the models, and narrows the range of likely outcomes by the end of this century to warming over the pre-industrial baseline of between 1.4 degrees Celsius (assuming a decline in CO2 emissions) and 4.4 degrees (assuming a tripling of CO2 emissions from current levels). Again, you can probably bet on the accuracy of that.