A new Climate Shift Index to map daily temperature shifts due to climate change

NEW DELHI: The average temperature of the planet has increased by 1.1C since 1850, before extensive industrialization. But the actual effects of climate change, such as how we debate whether this year was hotter than the last or how some parts of the world are warming more quickly than others are unclear. The US-based research and communications organisation Climate Central has created a new online mapping tool called the Climate Shift Index (CSI) that shows how daily average temperatures in more than 1,000 places around the world are affected more or less by global warming. The impact of climate change on thermostats across the US could be mapped almost in real time in June thanks to Climate Central. For example, on one July day, rich maroon-hued regions from California to Florida displayed temperatures that have become significantly more likely as a result of climate change.

Now that a global version of the index has been released, residents of Jakarta, Addis Abeba, and Shanghai may also keep tabs on the extent to which human-caused climate change is making their days (and nights) hotter or unusually mild in the winter. The index uses data from NOAA’s Global Forecast System, presenting the probability of the difference on a scale from -5 to 5, with 0 representing no climate effect. If Miami receives a 5, for example, that day’s temperature is at least five times more likely to occur due to climate change. Or, if Kathmandu is covered in grey at -2, global warming will make the temperature there that say twice as unlikely.

The difficulty in addressing climate change locally is that the weather continues to change daily. Temperature variations may be concealed when the weather is the most unpredictable, such as in the US in the fall, leaving a rather quiet map. Contrarily, during heat waves, like in Europe and China this summer, the story of climate change is much more obvious.

On the CSI map, if you zipped over to Mauritania, Morocco, or Saudi Arabia, you would find current climatic fingerprints. The equatorial region’s temperatures have already been affected by climate change this week, particularly in the small island nations and coastal areas that are adjacent to the warming ocean.

According to a Climate Central research, the Malay Archipelago (from Malaysia to Papua New Guinea), Brazil, Mexico, the Arabian Peninsula, and the Horn of Africa experienced the largest temperature shifts during the course of the previous year, from October 1, 2021, to September 30, 2022. Overall, Apia, Samoa, and Ngerulmud, Palau, both had 90 per cent of their days that were abnormally out of sync with what their temperatures would have been in a pre-climate crisis scenario.

The number of days with relative climate impacts was multiplied by the population of a location to reflect population centres in the researchers’ analysis. Coalitions of island states might use the map to emphasise in broad strokes the cost of climate change and the need for more climate funding from rich countries, particularly in the context of the upcoming COP27 negotiations, where “loss and damage” is expected to be a focus.