Climate Hotspots

This interactive map, known as Climate Hot Map, shows the impacts that global warming is having on different places around the world. As it is interactive...it is by definition, fun! You are able to check boxes on and off in order to look at the different climatic effects listed in 5 categories: People, freshwater, oceans, ecosystems, and temperature. For myself and the purposes of this blog, it is both useful and interesting to uncheck all of the boxes apart from ‘sea level’ so that you are left with the display shown below.

Click map to visit the web page.

The website attempts to place the spotlight on several selected locations in different regions of the world which are showing the effects of climate change and that are also well studied. Thus, many parts of the world, notably outside of North America and Europe, receive less coverage. Additionally, as well as each site having robust scientific evidence, they also suffer multiple stresses from human activity, and have, or are projected to be affected by multiple climate change impacts (UCS 2011).
The places chosen with sea level rise as their primary concern are:

- Brazil:   Recife

- Guyana

- Japan: Osaka

- Mexico: Cancun

- Republic of Maldives

- Republic of Kiribati

- USA: New York City, New York

Virginia Beach, Virginia

Mississippi Delta, Louisiana

For each, information is provided from a range of sources about the impacts as well as offering links to regional solutions of the problems faced.

References

UCS (2011) ‘Climate hot map: global warming effects around the world’ (WWW), Cambridge, MA: Union of Concerned Scientists (http://www.climatehotmap.org; 4 December 2012).