Bringing Climate Data to Life
Collider members collaborate with NOAA on a new version of the Climate Explorer that allows users to visualize climate changes based on higher and lower emissions pathways.
By Mickey Snowdon, Communications Liaison at The Collider.
As Communications Liaison with The Collider, I have the unique pleasure of talking with our various members and partners about their newest climate products, services, and technologies. This week, I sat down with Dave Michelson, software designer at the University of North Carolina at Asheville’s National Environmental Modeling and Analysis Center (NEMAC), and LuAnn Dahlman, science writer with NOAA’s Climate Program Office. We discussed their work on the latest update to the Climate Explorer — a web tool that provides interactive graphs and maps of climate information for every county in the contiguous United States — which was released at the end of January with the help of Collider members NEMAC and FernLeaf Interactive.
A Brief Overview of the Climate Explorer
The Climate Explorer was originally launched in 2014 and displays historical and projected county-level temperature, precipitation, and other related climate data for the contiguous US. The latest version, Climate Explorer 3.0, also includes weather station data for Alaska, with information for Hawai’i still on its way. The tool’s ability to access this data is powered by the NOAA Regional Climate Centers’ Applied Climate Information System (RCC-ACIS), a powerful web services platform that enables on-the-fly climate data requests. The tool was developed by a team of interagency federal partners led by NOAA’s Climate Program Office, NEMAC+FernLeaf, and other public and private partners, and operates under the auspices of the U.S. Global Change Research Program.
The Climate Explorer can be incredibly useful for city planners, but was created for anyone interested in the future ecological, public, economic, and social health of a county, including businesses, individuals, and communities of all sizes.
Putting Climate Projections in Users’ Hands
According to Michelson, NEMAC+FernLeaf partnered with NOAA’s Climate Program Office to perform usability studies for the Climate Explorer because people were having some difficulty navigating the website. Specifically, he points out that users were unaware that many of the tool’s resources — such as high-tide flooding maps — even existed. He also noted that the tool wasn’t originally created for mobile devices, so when a user would open the website on their phone, they would get an error message.
“Our goal is to put this tool into peoples’ hands and let them talk about the future. It’s all about increasing conversation around the urgency of climate change and the need for mitigation and adaptation efforts,” Michelson says.
Another issue that the tool’s developers were seeing was that all of a user’s filters would reset when they would switch between maps, charts, and counties. Michelson says that users can now seamlessly navigate between these functions while retaining their original filters.
Tell Me a Story
In addition to serving as the co-managing editor of the U.S. Climate Resilience Toolkit — the federal website for which the Climate Explorer is the featured tool — LuAnn Dahlman serves as the user advocate on the Climate Explorer development team. Dahlman’s expertise lies in interpreting climate data for people who are not climate scientists. One way she does this is by facilitating periodic workshops where she familiarizes teachers with the Climate Explorer so that they can use it with their students.
Today, Dahlman was patient enough to walk me (I am not a climate scientist) through Climate Explorer 3.0. To begin her demo, Dahlman gives me a scenario:
“Let’s say you’re a resident from a small town in Dane County, Wisconsin, and you have a friend who’s on the City Council and who’s concerned with the local impacts of climate change. You want to learn as much as you can about your region’s future climate so that you can share it with this friend in hopes that they can take some sort of city-level action,” she says.
Dahlman chooses Dane County because she recently did a remote teacher training there for public school teachers in Madison. She pulls up the Climate Explorer, types in “Dane County, WI,” then clicks on “Local Climate Charts.” She explains how the average daily maximum temperature for Dane County was around 56°F in the late 1900s, but this average is projected to increase to around 70°F by the end of this century if greenhouse gas emissions continue increasing at their current rate.
With this information, Dahlman begins to tell a story:
“In the late 20th century, afternoon high temperatures in Dane County averaged around 56°F. By the end of the 21st century, if carbon emissions continue to rise, projections show that average afternoon highs will range from 62° to 74°F, with a weighted average of 68°F.”
Dahlman explains that from this story, teachers can encourage their students to envision what it would mean for Dane County to go from having an average daily high temperature of 56°F to 68°F — a 12°F increase.
“This sort of engagement — when students are able to visualize these changes and then predict the potential effects they may have on their local environment — is what gets young people interested in a concept as abstract as climate change,” Dahlman tells me.
At this point, you may be wondering just how the Climate Explorer predicts future climate data. Dahlman explains that the tool’s future projections are based on the output of climate models — computer programs that represent the Earth’s physical processes with mathematical equations. Comparing the historical modeled results, or “hindcasts,” of climate models with observed temperatures is how scientists are able to see if the model can simulate the evolution of climate over the past five decades. From there, scientists judge the models’ skill in projecting future climate data.
Next up on the tour, Dahlman has us look at “Days with Maximum Temperatures Over 90 Degrees.” She explains that these are important to consider because of whom they affect the most: outdoor workers, those without air conditioning, people who are homeless, and flora and fauna. Dahlman says that extremely hot days also impact electrical lines and transportation and place stress on energy systems needed to cool homes and buildings. In the late 20th century, Dane County averaged eight days over 90°F each year. Projections show that this number could double by 2030.
The most extreme projections for the 2060s show that the region could experience as many as 90 days per year when daily maximum temperatures exceed 90°F.
Fewer Freezing Days
The Climate Explorer also offers projections for energy and agriculture concerns. Along these lines, Dahlman explains that “Cooling Degree Days” represent the amount of energy required for air conditioning, defined as days above 65°F. These projections can highlight the importance of transitioning to carbon-neutral energy sources. Dahlman says that in most places in the United States, the additional amount that people will have to spend on air conditioning is projected to be more than the amount that they will save on lower heating bills.
“While it may seem that a relatively cold region such as Dane County will benefit energy-wise from having fewer heating degree days in the future, the increase in cooling degree days will likely offset any cost reductions overall,” she explains.
Dahlman makes it clear that we have a lot of ground to cover on this tour, so we move on to “Days with Maximum Temperature Below 32 Degrees,” a dataset that is important considering Dane County’s northern location. She shows me that the region experienced an average of 61 days below freezing during the late 1900s. Looking at the days projected to have temperatures below freezing after 2014 is depressing: they steadily decline over this century so that there are only about 20 days that temperatures are projected to fall below freezing if we continue on our higher emissions path.
Dahlman says that this sort of information can help people understand the changes projected to occur within ecological systems. An example she cites is that fewer days below freezing is one of the major factors that have enabled bark beetles to expand throughout pine forests in the western US.
365 Days of High-Tide Flooding
The last tool in the Climate Explorer that Dahlman shows me is the High-Tide Flooding Chart. To demo this tool, she types the name of a coastal city (Wilmington, NC) into the tool’s search bar and selects Wilmington’s weather station.
The first thing that jumps out to me about this chart is that there appears to be no data prior to 2014, but from that date the projected days of high-tide flooding soar. Dahlman has us select “Historical Data,” and that’s when I can see that there actually were days of high-tide flooding prior to 2014 — they were just few and far between. Specifically, there were two days of flooding in 1996, four days in 1999, nine days in 2015, and eight days in 2016.
Projections on the chart for the lower emissions path indicate that Wilmington could experience 19 days of high-tide flooding by 2050. The higher emissions path projects 102 days of high-tide flooding per year by 2050. I notice that the higher emissions curve seems to stabilize around the year 2080 and ask Dahlman about it.
“At that point, Wilmington is experiencing flooding nearly every single day of the year. The chart can’t show more than 365 days a year,” she says.
I feel silly. The graph has “tapered off” because the city won’t physically be able to experience more than 365 high-tide flooding days by the 2080s.
Implications for Asheville, NC
Since The Collider is based in Asheville, NC, I was interested to see what changes are projected for Asheville in the coming decades, according to the Climate Explorer. Michelson had told me that the decrease in the average number of days in which the temperature dips below freezing is the most pertinent data for the Asheville area, since nighttime temperatures haven’t been cooling off as much in recent years. Examining the climate chart for “Days with Minimum Temperatures Below 32 Degrees,” I was able to develop my own story:
“Late last century, the region experienced around 110 days per year with temperatures below freezing. If the world doesn’t stabilize greenhouse gas emissions by 2040 and then reduce them dramatically for the rest of the century, Asheville is projected to experience an average of only 70 days below freezing per year by the 2090s.”
What sorts of changes can we expect from fewer freezing days in Asheville? For one, the number of growing days for crops is expected to increase. While this will benefit some crops, others (those with lower temperature thresholds) may not grow as well in a warmer climate. The Climate Explorer’s description of days below freezing reminds us that certain plants need a cumulative number of days below freezing in order to bud. Also, as North Carolina’s Climate Office points out, growing crops in a warmer climate will require more water — an already strained resource.
Additionally, citrus groves could migrate further north from Florida, and forests in the Southeast could die back, creating open prairies. As Dahlman mentioned with the western bark beetle, similar pests could thrive and increase in the Southeast with fewer freezing days.
Though it’s easy for me to feel somewhat hopeless looking at all of these projected climate trends, Dahlman is optimistic about the application of the Climate Explorer:
“The more hands we can get this tool into — especially teachers and students — the more we can move the conversation toward solutions. We all care, we just need the right resources to help us understand what current projections tell us about the future. The Climate Explorer is that resource.”
Stay tuned for more Climate Explorer updates that will allow users to get hyper-specific historical and projected climate data. The Climate Explorer team has also added a “Feedback” button on the website for users to provide input.
Special thanks to Nina Flagler Hall for her amazing copy edits.
