Today’s scary story, though, how having the gorgeous weather of San Diego is scary, I’m not sure, but, hey, we aren’t actually supposed to ask those kinds of questions
Climate change could give San Francisco the climate of San Diego, scientists say
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In addition to a broad look at heating and cooling needs around the country, Petri and Caldeira also zeroed in on 25 major U.S. cities to see how some of the country’s most populous places could change in the future. They found that, as of now, San Diego is the most “comfortable†city temperature-wise, meaning it has the lowest number of combined heating and cooling degree days. Residents of Minneapolis are less lucky — their city is the least comfortable.
And, in fact, projections indicate that Minneapolis will stay the city with the greatest number of heating and cooling degree days. But San Diego, on the other hand, will lose its title to another California city if nothing is done about climate change. Under a business-as-usual trajectory, the researchers found that San Francisco will become the city with the least number of heating and cooling degree days in the country. “The fact that future San Francisco will be quite similar to San Diego is really quite interesting,†Petri says, as present-day San Francisco is known for having a much cooler climate overall.
So, this would be a bad thing? Really? Of course, it would mean that the average temperature for San Fran would have to rise about 6-7 degrees Fahrenheit to match San Diego. Give it 600-700 years, and that could happen, what with the average global temperature rising a measly 1.4F since 1850.
Under the same scenario, Los Angeles would heat up enough to match the number of cooling degree days currently experienced by Jacksonville, Fla. And New York City’s combined number of heating and cooling degree days will match that of present-day Oklahoma City, as it will both lose heating days and gain cooling days.
Hooray for computer models!
