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Future Climate Projections - Graphs & Maps

U.S. Climate Resilience Toolkit – Climate Explorer

Check temperature, precipitation, and other climate conditions projected for the future for any county in the contiguous United States or burough in Alaska. Generate graphs or maps to compare conditions observed in the recent past (1961-1990) with conditions projected in future decades out to 2100. 

Where did these data come from?

Data in Climate Explorer are from a worldwide climate modeling experiment called CMIP5 (Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5). In this experiment, climate modelers around the world programmed their models to simulate past temperature and precipitation based on the observed abundance of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere and to project future conditions based upon a set of four scenarios that describe specific ways the atmosphere might change. The scenarios are called Representative Concentration Pathways or RCPs.

To make the projections useful at a county scale, coarse results (large pixels) from the global climate models were statistically downscaled using the Localized Constructed Analogs (LOCA) technique. The Climate Explorer shows results from two of the RCPs, labeling RCP4.5 as "lower emissions" and RCP8.5 as "higher emissions."

Learn more about the data in Climate Explorer on the site's About page.

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