论文标题:Contemporary climatic analogs for 540 North American urban areas in the late 21st century

作者:Matthew C. Fitzpatrick, Robert R. Dunn

数字识别码: 10.1038/s41467-019-08540-3

《自然-通讯》发表的一项研究Contemporary climatic analogs for 540 North American urban areas in the late 21st century为540个北美城市2080年的预测气候找到了最为相似的当前区域气候。例如,如果排放在2040年前后达到峰值,那么2080年的华盛顿气候与目前美国阿肯色州帕拉戈尔德的气候最为相似。研究团队还开发了一款网络应用,能让用户搜索到每个地区的详细结果。

世界著名城市气候分布(这540个北美城市的气候与哪里的最为相似)(1)

图1 : 2080年华盛顿哥伦比亚特区的气候相似地图。图源:Fitzpatrick & Dunn

美国马里兰大学环境科学中心的Matthew Fitzpatrick和Robert Dunn通过绘制气候相似地图(将某地区的未来气候预测与其它地区的当前气候进行匹配),形象展示了气候变化将如何影响2080年约2.5亿北美居民的生活。作者基于两个排放轨迹对540个城市(530个美国城市和10个加拿大城市)的气候地图进行了绘制——一种排放轨迹将在整个21世纪持续增加,另一种排放轨迹会在2040年左右达到峰值后开始下降。

世界著名城市气候分布(这540个北美城市的气候与哪里的最为相似)(2)

图2:未来不同的气候场景对北美城市相似当代气候的影响。图源:Fitzpatrick & Dunn

作者发现,如果排放量在整个21世纪持续增加,平均而言,北美城市气候会最接近现在850公里以外(方向以向南为主)的地区气候。但是作者发现,许多城市未来的预测气候和与其最为相似的当代气候之间依然存在很大差异。这表明到2080年前,许多北美城市可能会出现当代所没有的全新气候状况。作者希望研究结果能以直观的方式让公众对气候变化会给城市居民带来何等影响有更多的认识。

摘要:A major challenge in articulating human dimensions of climate change lies in translating global climate forecasts into impact assessments that are intuitive to the public. Climate-analog mapping involves matching the expected future climate at a location (e.g., a person’s city of residence) with current climate of another, potentially familiar, location - thereby providing a more relatable, place-based assessment of climate change. For 540 North American urban areas, we used climate-analog mapping to identify the location that has a contemporary climate most similar to each urban area’s expected 2080’s climate. We show that climate of most urban areas will shift considerably and become either more akin to contemporary climates hundreds of kilometers away and mainly to the south or will have no modern equivalent. Combined with an interactive web application, we provide an intuitive means of raising public awareness of the implications of climate change for 250 million urban residents.

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期刊介绍:Nature Communications(https://www.nature.com/ncomms/) is an open access journal that publishes high-quality research from all areas of the natural sciences. Papers published by the journal represent important advances of significance to specialists within each field.

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(来源:Nature Communications)

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