Local Climate Snapshots

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This interactive visualization provides a clear, well-documented snapshot of current and projected values of several climate variables for local areas in California. The climate variables include observed and projected temperatures, projected snowpack, areas vulnerable to flooding due to sea level rise, and projected increase in wildfires. The projected values come from expert sources and well-established climate models.

Ask questions that arise from careful observation of phenomena, models, or unexpected results, to clarify and/or seek additional information.

Ask questions that arise from careful observation of phenomena, or unexpected results, to clarify and/or seek additional information.

The many dynamic and delicate feedbacks between the biosphere and other Earth systems cause a continual co-evolution of Earth’s surface and the life that exists on it.

Current models predict that, although future regional climate changes will be complex and varied, average global temperatures will continue to rise. The outcomes predicted by global climate models strongly depend on the amounts of human-generated greenhouse gases added to the atmosphere each year and by the ways in which these gases are absorbed by the ocean and biosphere.

The sustainability of human societies and the biodiversity that supports them requires responsible management of natural resources.

Though the magnitudes of human impacts are greater than they have ever been, so too are human abilities to model, predict, and manage current and future impacts.

Weather and climate are influenced by interactions involving sunlight, the ocean, the atmosphere, ice, landforms, and living things. These interactions vary with latitude, altitude, and local and regional geography, all of which can affect oceanic and atmospheric flow patterns.

Human activities have significantly altered the biosphere, sometimes damaging or destroying natural habitats and causing the extinction of other species. But changes to Earth’s environments can have different impacts (negative and positive) for different living things.

Human activities, such as the release of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels, are major factors in the current rise in Earth’s mean surface temperature (global warming). Reducing the level of climate change and reducing human vulnerability to whatever climate changes do occur depend on the understanding of climate science, engineering capabilities, and other kinds of knowledge, such as understanding of human behavior and on applying that knowledge wisely in decisions and activities.

Changes in the atmosphere due to human activity have increased carbon dioxide concentrations and thus affect climate.

Typically as human populations and per-capita consumption of natural resources increase, so do the negative impacts on Earth unless the activities and technologies involved are engineered otherwise.

Through computer simulations and other studies, important discoveries are still being made about how the ocean, the atmosphere, and the biosphere interact and are modified in response to human activities.

Empirical evidence is required to differentiate between cause and correlation and make claims about specific causes and effects.

Cause and effect relationships can be suggested and predicted for complex natural and human designed systems by examining what is known about smaller scale mechanisms within the system.

Systems can be designed for greater or lesser stability.

Feedback (negative or positive) can stabilize or destabilize a system.

Cause and effect relationships may be used to predict phenomena in natural or designed systems.

Empirical evidence is needed to identify patterns.

Change and rates of change can be quantified and modeled over very short or very long periods of time. Some system changes are irreversible.

Phenomena may have more than one cause, and some cause and effect relationships in systems can only be described using probability.

Graphs, charts, and images can be used to identify patterns in data.

Stability might be disturbed either by sudden events or gradual changes that accumulate over time.

Changes in systems may have various causes that may not have equal effects.

Systems in dynamic equilibrium are stable due to a balance of feedback mechanisms.

Local Climate Snapshots

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