State-by-State Climate Summaries Can Aid Resilient Design

We know the global trajectory of temperature spikes based on different carbon scenarios—and we hope for an average lower than 1.5°C—but international projections don’t help us predict local climate impacts. With a new tool from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), project teams and building owners can now check on climate projections for their own states.

Developed in partnership with regional and state climatologists along with the Cooperative Institute for Satellite Earth System Studies, which hosts the interactive map tool, the climate summaries “spell out recent local conditions for each state and provide insights about the state’s climate outlook based on historical trends,” according to NOAA.

For each state, the map shows three key messages along with an extensive summary of climate expectations. Detailed graphs illustrate data about temperature changes, flooding and drought risks, and agricultural outlooks. For example, for California, the three key messages note that:

• Temperatures in the state have risen 3°F since 1900.
• As a result, snowpack is melting earlier, contributing to summer drought.
• Sea levels will rise one to four feet in the state by 2100.

The summary offers a more complete picture, showing extreme temperatures, numbers of warm and cold days and nights, snowpack amounts over time, reservoir levels, drought severity, and more. A list of resources allows users to find materials to dig deeper.

In addition, users can access the source code for the charts for use in their own analyses.

Since state-level data can be fairly general, certain design decisions won’t benefit directly from this tool.

More on resilience tools

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A Resilience Toolkit for Affordable Housing

New Resilience Tool, RiskFootprint, Gets Nod from USGBC

For more information:

Cooperative Institute for Satellite Earth System Studies
ncics.org