This is part 8 of a series on world-building Climate Change scenarios for fiction.
Climate Change as a subject is enormous and excruciatingly technical. Thankfully a lot of science communication work exists out there.
Here are some resources to check out.
Online Tools:
These are how I got the numbers for sea-levels and temperature rises earlier. Jump in and explore. Many other tools are out there, these are just a few I’ve found useful.
Side note: Local level resources will provide greater accuracy and fine scale detail than some of these. Try government departments, city councils, and national research institutes. I’m only familiar with what’s available for New Zealand as getting this level of info can be a bit daunting, especially when it’s written in Chinese or Arabic.
Wikipedia:
This might seem a wee bit obvious, but the most cities have a Climate section which will give you a detailed breakdown of monthly climate variables. This is invaluable information. e.g. this one for Baghdad or this one for Ulaanbaatar.
An excellent tool for finding specific impacts for every country. e.g. temperature rises, wheat yields, flooding damages, etc.
An interactive map for sea level rise. Try different scenarios. See on the map where the new coastline will be. Be sure to read the “Details and Limitations” to understand why this isn’t exactly where the future coastline might end up.
Wet-bulb temperature is the humidity adjusted temperature. This is important for health. Beyond certain levels of temperature and humidity humans cannot lose enough heat via sweating. We overheat and potentially die if the exposure goes on too long. The danger zone begins around 32°C wet-bulb.
Today this is a rare occurrence. In future lethal wet-bulb temperatures might occur more frequently, mostly in the tropics. If you are world-building a tropical location it’s important to check if they ever experience lethal conditions. If they do, then this location is going to be extraordinarily unpleasant without air-conditioning.
Create a custom scenario for the planet’s energy system transition. See what level of global warming that produces.
Local Level Examples:
Here’s some New Zealand examples that provide more detail at a local level. You’ll see the general picture is much the same. That said, if you know where such local level tools are, then you might as well use them.
Our Future Climate New Zealand
Greater Wellington Regional Council Sea Level Rise
General Info Sources:
Many, many, many people out there are discussing climate. Here’s a few big ones, plus other’s I’ve found interesting over the years. This is not a complete list in the slightest.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC):
This is the authoritative source for Climate Change science. It’s extremely technical, but if you want to check the facts this is the place.
Some caveats: the IPCC is a “boundary organization” that exists to communicate science to politics. This does mean the language is sometimes softened to be more politically palatable.
The IPCC is often said to be “conservative” too, in the sense of being resistant to more extreme or untested views. Science is naturally conservative in this way. Generally that is a good thing. The facts are solid. The downside is that sometimes the extreme view might turn out to be right (but only sometimes).
If you want to know what level of warming we are heading for this is the place to go. They also have detailed reports on every country’s climate mitigation efforts.
News about climate issues.
News about climate issues.
A climate change podcast by The Commonwealth Club of California.
For avoiding misinformation, these guys do some debunking (I haven’t read much of this, but it seems reasonable. Might be good if you think you might be getting baffled by misinformation).
If you really want to dive directly into the science. Expect to get lost.
The 2100 window:
Most science only looks out as far as the year 2100. Finding info for more distant dates can get very hard. Thankfully research is increasingly looking as far as 2300 or beyond. Expect to be digging into a rare handful of scientific papers if you want info for the very distant future.
Some thoughts on scientific papers:
Journal articles are written for an expert audience within that field. They are frequently incomprehensible even to other scientists in different specializations. Scientific work, while useful is usually a bad starting point when researching a topic.
Typically it makes sense to start with review and meta-analysis articles. These summarize an area of research. For Climate Change, the IPCC is the mother of all reviews. Most of the time you might as well start there, rather than diving straight into random articles.
A final reminder:
Any single climate issue could consume a lifetime of research. It is very easy to get lost researching stuff that ultimately doesn’t matter. Remember - we are doing fiction here.
I think of these scientific numbers as a way of calibrating my intuitions. What is plausible? What is not plausible?
It’s very rare any specific value will actually make it into a piece of fiction, unless all the characters are climate scientists who quote data at each other for some reason.
But, sometimes you do need that one specific detail... and you just can’t find it. Next time we’ll talk about the inevitability of being wrong.
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