Global warming

[pbrower2a]

Here is a projection of how the world's climatic patterns change over a century:

Starting with 1976-2000, which most of us treat as the norm:





and 2076-2100 with one of the milder projections



Note that this does not make allowances for sea level change, as the Greenland Ice Sheet will shrink dramatically. I expect inundations.

Deserts remain in place (especially those of northern and southern Africa, Arabia, Iran, central Asia, the Gobi, the Thar, the Australian Outback, western North America, and the Atacama) with Patagonia probably becoming more of a desert. The Kalahari expands in Botswana and South Africa, which is not good for people of Botswana and South Africa.  Because the Antarctic Convergence remains in place and shields Antarctica from any warm air masses, Antarctica remains largely entombed in ice.  But boreal climates supplant some tundra in Baffin Island, Greenland, and Novaya Zemlya, as the Arctic region warms significantly.    

Tropical rain forests expand little, but cold air masses do not reach as far south in North America and eastern Asia or as far west in Europe. The line between tropical and subtropical climates moves from about Fort Myers to Tampa-St. Pete in Florida.

The line between an above-freezing January and a below-freezing January goes from Poland to the eastern boundary of Belarus. The freezing-January-non-freezing  January now near St. Louis, Indianapolis, and New York City goes through Chicago, Lansing, Toronto, and roughly Portland, Maine. Ukraine and most of Europe south of Slovakia  goes from having mostly a fire-and-ice climate to having the same hot summers but much milder winters. (Greece, Albania, and the Adriatic coast remain Mediterranean). Does that sound good? There goes the maize crop. Even Helsinki becomes fairly mild in the winter.

Western France and perhaps parts of southern Britain start getting a Mediterranean climate as summer rains start to fail.

People are going to depend upon corn, wheat, and potato crops from Canada. European Russia, Finland, and northern Sweden as those places go from boreal forests to excellent cropland -- except that the soils are rocky and low in nutrients. There will be plenty of cotton from Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio.

The projection (which still does not make allowances for inundation of what are now prime croplands) would suggest to me that global warming is a dicey phenomenon, not so much for whether it will happen, but instead whether Humanity can adjust. Negative population growth, anyone?

But here's an even more ominous projection based upon higher levels of carbon dioxide:


Warm-temperate, at least seasonally-rainy climates disappear almost completely from the northern and southern tips of Africa, and tropical conditions replace the conditions of warm-temperate south of Brazil (the part of Brazil that really is prosperous). Summer droughts become the norm in northern and western France and southern Britain. Sure, the growing season lengthens, but a part of it becomes really dry. Successful farming in Mediterranean (mid-latitude places with winter rains but summer drought) relies heavily upon irrigation, something for which southern Britain and most of northern and western France is ill-prepared. Savagely-hot deserts appear in central Asia and Xinjiang Province (western China), and you can only imagine how bad the Arabian Peninsula gets. Semi-deserts expand in Spain and appear in the Balkans.

Any Texas-haters here? Texas dries out severely west of about Dallas and Victoria, with semi-desert short-grass prairie supplanting the fertile long-grass prairie zone of central Texas. Western Texas becomes outright desert -- brutal desert much like southern Arizona and southeastern California today. Central and western Oklahoma, southern New Mexico, and northern Mexico get a raw deal, too. Don't mess with Texas -- keep the carbon emissions down and Texas will fare a little better than otherwise.

Any good news? Maine and the Canadian Maritime Provinces get seriously mild.  

Boreal forests start to appear even as far north as Ellesmere Island, northwestern Greenland, and Spitsbergen, suggesting milder temperatures in the Arctic basin, even at 80N. (Antarctica still remains under the grip of ice because the Antarctic Convergence blocks any warm air masses from reaching Antarctica).  But don't be fooled; the Arctic Ocean would likely be an extremely stormy sea.