New Map Shows How Climate Change Will Transform San Jose

If emissions continue apace, San Jose will feel more like the SoCal town of Glendale in 60 years—a few degrees warmer and much, much drier.

That’s according to a new interactive map published this week in the journal Nature Communications, which offers an unsettling preview at the future climate of 540 cities in North America by comparing them with towns in the present.

The data is nothing new, but the way it’s presented in climate-analog mapping represents a change in the way scientists are trying to communicate their findings to the general public in a way that’s more relatable and less abstract.

Researchers found that by 2080, San Francisco would feel like the Southern California town Palos Verdes Estates does today, about 7 degrees warmer and 40 percent drier. Santa Cruz would feel like North Hollywood, which is 6 degrees hotter and nearly 50 percent drier. Gilroy would get 61 percent wetter and more than 8 degrees warmer like the desert town of Jurupa Valley hundreds of miles south.

“We find that if emissions continue to rise throughout the 21st century, climate of North American urban areas will become, on average, most like the contemporary climate of locations 850 km away and mainly to the south, with the distance, direction, and degree of similarity to the best analog varying by region and assumptions regarding future climate,” University of Maryland scientist Matthew Fitzpatrick and his co-authors wrote in summarizing their study.

Some places would fare far worse. “Many cities could experience climates with no modern equivalent in North America,” he cautioned.

The temperature change doesn’t capture the full impact of a warmer climate, however. That few-degree uptick in Silicon Valley, for example, would be accompanied by increased flooding, rising sea levels that will overtake shoreline communities like Mountain View and San Jose’s Alviso.

Thankfully, San Jose as a city is doing its part to curb emissions. When President Trump pulled out of the Paris agreement, San Jose adopted goals that align with the international pact. Click here to read more about Climate Smart San Jose, and here to play around with the interactive future-climate-predicting map.

13 Comments

  1. > Click here to read more about Climate Smart San Jose, and here to play around with the interactive future-climate-predicting map.

    “Playing around” is absolutely correct.

    The climate fear industry is totally based on computer models. There are zillions of climate computer models.

    Climate scientist Roy Spencer documented NINETY such computer models five years ago, back in 2014:

    http://www.drroyspencer.com/2014/02/95-of-climate-models-agree-the-observations-must-be-wrong/

    “95% of Climate Models Agree: The Observations Must be Wrong”

    If there are NINETY computer models and they all give different answers, AT LEAST EIGHTY NINE of the models must be wrong.

    Probably, ALL NINETY models are wrong.

    Personally, I don’t believe any of them.

    But if you it makes you feel better, believe one of the computer models that predicts that we’re all going to be fine.

  2. This story is pure trash. But hey, worst case scenerio is we have SoCal weather without having to go to SoCal to get it.

  3. The Great and Powerful Aoc will save us all in less than 12 years, first take away the cars and trucks, then the airplanes, next tear down all the building and stop pumping oil. After that we all live in communal caves and we will all grow our own food with fertilizer we make from human waste as she banned cows. I don’t know were all the cows will go, maybe Mars when all the smart people leave in the electric space ships.

    Aoc , Aoc!

  4. Glad to see that when President Orange pulled us out of the Paris Agreement, leaders of the City of SJ stepped up. We’re doing our part, but I fear that with the current mindset of a minority of vocal deniers, it won’t be enough.

    I think it really sucks what we’re doing to the planet, and all the creatures we share it with, and those people who will come after us. They will ask, What were they thinking? But most deniers will be dead by then. They don’t care now, they sure won’t care then. Head in the sand now, head in the dirt then.

  5. SCCR,
    I feel so bad for you, why don’t you take the train to Hawaii, and I’ll go skiing down Mt. Hamilton.

  6. Reading this article and its predictions of higher future temperatures in San Jose, prompts the question, as to why the 2018 One Engine Inoperative Study assumed temperatures 7 degrees cooler than did the 2007 study?

    Granted, the consultant who did the study suggested he was being conservative in 2007, but, given the type of outcome that is being suggested, wouldn’t a more conservative view of future temperatures be warranted?

  7. > We’re doing our part, but I fear that with the current mindset of a minority of vocal deniers, it won’t be enough.

    What?! You’re blaming global warming on “a minority of vocal deniers”?

    WE’RE A MINORITY! WE HAVE NO POWER!

    Blame global warming on who it is who has the power! Blame it on DEMOCRATS!

    Blame it on Gavin Newsom! Blame it on the California Legislature! Blame it on Sam Liccardo!

    I’M INNOCENT!!!

  8. I would like to comment on San Francisco Bay Area “warming” with specific focus on San Jose’s “warming.”

    No one is discussing the “heat” given off by human bodies in the “Global warming” discussion.

    San Jose welcomes everyone in the world to come here to live, even though many,many people cannot afford to live here.

    Still the bodies mount up causing San Jose to be “over-heated.”

    I suggest a “sewer-hook-up moratorium” to stop all residential development in conjunction with a “move-along-little-doggies” program to ensure people who cannot afford to live here to leave.

    If both of the aforementioned progressive ideas are employed, there will be a significant “cooling” of San Jose that would transform the slums, which so uniquely characterizes San Jose, into a “cool” place to live.

    David S. Wall

  9. If I had written this fatuous nonsense I wouldn’t have put my name on it, either. Scribblers loves them their bylines. But at some point, discretion supersedes valor; they tuck tail and go incognito.

    First off, the basic hypothesis refers to GLOBAL warming. Cherry-picking different localities is being discussed in the next building, classroom 19B, down the first hall and to your left. Students who would rather remain here are axed to refrain from discusing anything other than the hypothesis supporting the “carbon” false alarm.

    To be clear, the basic hypothesis that’s been causing all the ruckus is:

    “Dangerous man-made global warming” …is gonna getcha! (OK, I added that last part. But since there is NEVER any possibility allowed for a beneficial result from a slightly warmer, balmier world, we can only discuss whether the rapidly approaching climate catastrophe™ will be:

    A) Very Bad

    B) Extremely bad; less than 20% of humanity will survive. Or…

    C) Total annihilation of all multicellular life on earth, AKA: Ragnarok!!

    Pray to Gaia that we dodge a bullet, and the destruction is limited to “A.”

    ‘K? Thx, bye…

    …Umm-m, waitaminit! May we review some real science for a moment??

    Thank you. The correct methodology to determine whether an hypothesis is valid or not, is by observing whether it is capable of making repeated, accurate predictions.

    If the hypothesis in question is able to accurately predict future events, then after many years and thousands of confirming tests, the hypothesis may even be promoted to the status of a Theory.

    Then, after many more decades, the Hypothesis-cum-Theory may be elevated to the status of a scientific Law. But it all depends on whether the original hypothesis was able to make routine predictions accurately.

    One more caveat: if the hypothesis does not make accurate predictions, then that hypothesis has been FALSIFIED, (a more polite term than “debunked.”)

    When that happens, the scientists who had hoped to show conclusively that their hypothesis was valid have a choice. They can either ‘Go back to the drawing board,’ and try to understand where their hypothesis/conjecture was so wrong.

    Or, they can simply defenestrate the hypothesis (which itself adds to our scientific knowledge, since scientists don’t have to go barking up that same tree again).

    With me so far? Good! The test will be open book; multiple choice. Good luck, class.

    Now, has the “dangerous man-made global warming” hypothesis made accurate predictions? Anyone? …OK, I will answer:

    Not one scary, alarming prediction based on the “dangerous man-made global warming” hypothesis has ever come true. No exceptions.

    Rather than being exterminated, the arctic Polar bear population has exploded, more than tripling since Algore’s alarming prediction.

    And the predictions that Tuvalu, Bora Bora, Kiribati, and other South Sea islands would be submerged by now were also flat wrong. Again, no exceptions.

    Same-same with Manhatten being submerged, and South Florida, &etc.

    The predictions that snowfall would be a thing of the past were likewise completely wrong. And the predictions that precipitation would rise were just as wrong.

    Many predictions were made asserting that hurricanes and tornadoes would become more energetic, and that they would increase in both number and intensity, were likewise absolutely wrong.

    The central prediction, which has been repeated constantly — states that global temperatures would skyrocket by ≈2ºC, due to the 40%+ rise in carbon dioxide (CO2), has been completely debunked. The rise in global T has not accelerated at all.

    The planet continues to gradually warm at about the same rate that it began to warm following the nadir of the Little Ice Age, in the 1700’s. The LIA was the coldest episode of the current 6,000-year long Holocene ‘climate’ that we live in. The planet continues to naturally recover from the LIA in fits and starts. There is no correlation of global T to rising CO2.

    About 97% of rising CO2 comes from natural sources; only around 3% comes from human emissions. Furthermore, changes in natural sources routinely change from year to year more than our emissions, so temperature measurements cannot be corellated to CO2.

    But ∆CO2 can be corellated to glopbal temperatures like this:

    ∆CO2 FOLLOWS ∆T on all time scales, from months to millennia.

    Then there’s this: Cause cannot precede effect. Therefore, changing temperatures are the cause of changes in CO2. Not vice-versa.

    The climate alarmist crowd just got their causation backward, that’s all.

    But now Big Money and politix follows the “carbon” scare — and otherwise sensible people begin to head-nod along with the thoroughly debunked “climate” false alarm. For example, please see the post above.

  10. Reading this article and its predictions of higher future temperatures in San Jose, prompts the question, as to why the One Engine Inoperative Study (downtown/Diridon Station Area heights) that was just completed by SJC assumes temperatures 7 degrees cooler than did the 2007 study?

  11. This article is not great and does not really address the larger issues at hand, I agree, but people have been feeling and seeing the effects of climate change and pollution for many years now. Not in your backyard maybe, but around this country, in many areas, it is bad. The pollution from big fossil fuel companies is horrific and has been for years. If you have never talked to or heard from people living in those communities, you should. Denying the climate science is rather embarrassing and ignorant at this point. It’s similar to thinking the earth is flat or vaccines cause autism (both inaccurate). Many of the predictions from 20 years ago, even 30 years ago, have been pretty accurate and even worse than predicted in some areas of the world. Almost every scientific organization (i.e. people way smarter than us) agree that it is happening, we are the cause, and we must change. Yes, it is inconvenient, but we have acted like parasites on this planet for too long . This is not a left, right, dem, GOP issue. It is a human issue. It is moral center issue. Clean, renewable energy is just plain smarter, cleaner, and soon cheaper. Solar and wind energy are all ready contributing a huge percentage to the CA energy grid, and that will continue to grow. CA is a leader in this fight against climate change. Consider yourselves lucky you don’t live near a coal plant, oil refinery, or natural gas fracking plant, etc. The pollutions to those communities (which are mostly vulnerable, poor communities, people of color, etc) is disgusting and unjust.

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