How the impact of climate change is changing world maps

almost always, Maps It was based on the climate classification system proposed by Vladimir Köppen. However, these maps were designed for a climate that no longer exists. Multinational investigation published in Scientific data (Belongs to natureThe global climate has witnessed notable changes in climate classification over the past century, and these changes are expected to intensify in the coming decades, according to a report led by experts from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST).

With an updated version of Köppen-Geiger climate classification maps 1 km, The study provides a comprehensive overview of historical and future climate conditions around the world.

Our web application It allows anyone to check this in any country in the world and in different emissions scenarios. In Australia, you can see the expansion of the hot desert zone and the contraction of the temperate zones. The Climate Map of the Future assumes that countries meet their climate goals. It could be much worse. Or it might be better to finally address climate change with the urgency it needs.

Köppen was a 19th-century Russian botanist who later retrained as a meteorologist. Throughout his career, he combined both interests, and was fascinated by the relationship between climate and plant species.

Around 1900, he proposed the influential climate classification system that bears his name today with his assistant Rudolf Geiger. Currently, with some variations, it is the most widely used classification system, because it combines different aspects of climate data into landscape and vegetation types, ranging from tropical forests, savannas and deserts to temperate and boreal forests, tundra, glaciers and ice sheets.

classification Köppen Geiger he have Five main climate categories: Tropical, dry, temperate, cold and arctic. These are divided into 30 subcategories Depending on the amount of rain and temperatures in summer and winter.

You might think it would be relatively easy to determine whether climate change has pushed an area into a new classification. Add to that the 1.2°C global warming recorded so far, and that changes everything.

Unfortunately, this is not easy to determine anyway. This is because climate change can have peculiar regional effects. Rainfall is much more in some areas and much less in others. Some regions are warming faster than the global average, while others are warming more slowly. Climate models predict that such variations will continue to exist. Moreover, some degree of warming will have a greater impact on the glacier edge than in the Sahara.

To find out what would happen, extensive databases of past weather observations and future climate projections under different social, economic and emissions trajectories were analyzed to redraw the Köppen map.. We did this on a very fine scale, dividing the world into square kilometers so that we could observe local changes in mountainous regions and on small islands..

The results were surprising. In some parts of the world, climate zones have already changed dramatically since Koppen drew his first climate map more than a century ago. The most rapid adjustment has occurred in recent decades. The greatest changes are recorded in cold and polar climates, which have become less cold and drier at times.

Many countries have already changed their climatic zone in more than half of their area. Hungary, for example, is the country that has done this the most. 81% of the country's population has already moved to a different, more moderate climate zone. Other global hotspots include Central Europe, the Middle East and South Korea.

Our projections indicate that these regions are among the regions that will suffer the greatest climate changes until the year 2100. Some will change regions more than once.

Some countries at more extreme latitudes will see more significant adjustments. For example, nearly a quarter (24%) of Canada and Russia have moved to another climate zone since the first Köppen map. Another 39-40% of its vast continental masses will follow the same path before the end of the century.

A similar story applies to Europe, where climate zones will change by one-third to two-thirds of the area in most countries. South Africa and the neighboring countries of Eswatini and Lesotho are the fastest changing countries in the Southern Hemisphere. Its climatic zones have changed across 28% of its combined surface area. By 2100, an additional 44% will be different. On the other hand, Australia's climatic zones have already changed in 14% of the country's area, and are expected to witness another 13% of changes during the remainder of this century.

Climate zones may not move in some areas. This is because the Köppen region represents a specific range of temperature and precipitation conditions, and the region can move within this range. But Coben did not expect what would happen now. In their classification, deserts and tropical climates are at the upper end of the temperature scale and cannot change: they simply become hotter.

On the ground, these actions will force changes so radical and rapid that they are already altering natural ecosystems. As the impact of global warming worsens, it will impose major changes on our farms and infrastructure. Humanity gets half of its calories from just three plants (rice, corn, and wheat) and each has a preferred climate.

A hotter and drier climate leads to more droughts, as well as crop failure, water scarcity, ecosystem degradation, forest fires, and desertification. Warmer winters, extreme heat, drought and fires have struck forests around the world, from the cold high latitudes of Canada and Russia to the dry forests of the Mediterranean, California and Australia. Even the Amazon rainforest is affected.

Of course, some changes may be beneficial to people, such as improved agricultural conditions or lower heating costs in cold regions. But the overall picture is one of catastrophic changes. Over the next few decades, it will take all of humanity's commitment and ingenuity to avoid a major climate catastrophe.

*Albert Van DyckProfessor of Water and Landscape Dynamics, Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National University.