On july 10, According to a new analysis published based on optimistic projections, by 2050, the climate of London will resemble that of Madrid today; Paris will be more like Canberra; Stockholm like Budapest and Moscow like Sofia.
The changes will be even more dramatic for the world’s major tropical cities such as Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta and Singapore, which will experience unprecedented weather conditions that will result in extreme weather events and intense droughts.
The study was carried out by scientists from ETH Zurich and published in PLOS ONE on Wednesday.
The researchers examined the climate of the world’s 520 major cities using 19 variables that reflect the variability of temperature and precipitation.
Forecasts for the future were estimated using a deliberately optimistic model, which means that it assumed that carbon dioxide emissions would stabilize by the middle of the century through implementation of green policies, with an average increase in global temperature of 1.4 degrees Celsius. The team then compared climate similarity of current and future cities to one another, and the results make for dire reading.
Across the northern hemisphere, cities in 2050 will resemble places that are over 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) further south towards the equator. Those closer to the equator won’t see drastic warming but will likely have more extremes of drought and rainfall.
Overall, 77 percent of the world’s cities will experience a “striking change” in climate conditions, while 22 percent will experience “novel” conditions.
In Europe, summers and winters will get warmer, with average increases of 3.5 Celsius and 4.7 Celsius, respectively.
While the modeling used in the analysis is not new, the purpose of the paper was to organize that information in a way that will inspire policy makers to act.
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