In this month’s edition of Mapping for Good we’ll take a look at an exciting tool used to gauge the effects of climate change. ClimateWizard, developed by a partnership between The Nature Conservancy, the University of Washington and the University of Southern Mississippi, allows users to view climate data from the past and present as well as view several predictive models.
ClimateWizard provides access to climate data and allows users to compare climate change statistics across time periods.While several tools have been created to display climate data, ClimateWizard bills itself as being “the first time ever [that] the full range of climate history and impacts for a landscape have been brought together in a user-friendly format.” The ultimate goal of the project is, as stated, to take scientific information that’s difficult to understand and then display it on a map in a way that the average person can easily comprehend the magnitude of climate change. Several layers can be turned on and off, and the databases from which the map pulls its statistics cover a range of climate metrics and uses:
- Historic temperature and rainfall maps for anywhere in the world
- State-of-the-art future predictions of temperature and rainfall around the world
- View and download climate maps in a few easy steps
ClimateWizard not only allows for the comparison of time periods but also has the option for users to choose the “severity” of the predictive model that is being displayed. In other words, users can view the predicted outcomes of climate change with “bad, worse and worst” case scenarios in mind. What will likely startle many who visit the site is the fact that even the most conservative estimates of the effects of climate change show extreme changes both regionally and globally.
If you’d like to try out the tool or learn more about the project, visit www.climatewizard.org.
Fletcher Berryman
Cloud Tamer
(970) 710-0909
fletcher@apollomapping.com
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