The Weather of the Future: Heat Waves, Extreme Storms, and Other Scenes from a Climate-Changed Planet

by Heidi Cullen

Overview

Droughts. Floods.
Climate refugees.
Global warming isn't just about polar bears anymore.

Let's assume we do nothing about climate change. Imagine that we just continue to emit carbon at our current levels or even exceed those levels. How would our weather change? What would our forecast be? Welcome to The Weather of the Future.

In this groundbreaking work, Dr. Heidi Cullen, one of the world's foremost climatologists and environmental journalists, puts a vivid face on climate change, offering a new way of seeing this phenomenon not just as an event set to happen in the distant future but as something happening right now in our own backyards. Arguing that we must connect the weather of today with the climate change of tomorrow, Cullen combines the latest research from scientists on the ground with state-of-the-art climate-model projections to create climate-change scenarios for seven of the most at-risk locations around the world.

From the Central Valley of California, where coming droughts will jeopardize the entire state's water supply, to Greenland, where warmer temperatures will give access to mineral wealth buried beneath ice sheets for millennia, Cullen illustrates how, if left unabated, climate change will transform every corner of the world by midcentury. What emerges is a mosaic of changing weather patterns that collectively spell out the range of risks posed by global warming—whether it's New York City, whose infrastructure is extremely vulnerable to even a relatively weak category 3 hurricane, or Bangladesh, a country so low-lying that millions of people could become climate refugees due to rising sea levels.

Provocative and convincing, The Weather of the Future makes climate change local, showing how no two regions of the country or the world will be affected in quite the same way, and demonstrating that melting ice is just the beginning.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780061992421
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	08/24/2010
Sold by:	HARPERCOLLINS
Format:	eBook
Pages:	352
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Dr. Heidi Cullen is a senior research scientist with Climate Central, a nonprofit climate news and research organization, and a visiting lecturer at Princeton University.

Table of Contents

List of Maps

Introduction

Part I Your Weather Is Your Climate

1 Climate and Weather Together 3

2 Seeing Climate Change in Our Past 12

3 The Science of Prediction 31

4 Extreme Weather Autopsies and the Forty-Year Forecast 50

Part II The Weather of the Future

5 The Sahel, Africa 63

6 The Great Barrier Reef, Australia 89

7 Central Valley, California 115

8 The Arctic, Part One: Inuit Nunaat, Canada 149

9 The Arctic, Part Two: Greenland 173

10 Dhaka, Bangladesh 197

11 New York, New York 227

Epilogue: The Trillionth Ton 261

Appendix 1 United States Climate Change Almanac 273

Appendix 2 New York Statistics 297

Appendix 3 The World's Most Vulnerable Places 299

Notes 303

Acknowledgments 313

Index 317

What People are Saying About This

Laurie David

In this important and timely book, Heidi Cullen breaks ground...simplifying the connection between weather and climate and bringing the true impact of the problem, literally, right to your front door.

Michiko Kakutani

“A scorching vision of what life might be like in the warmer world that is already on its way. ”

Elizabeth Kolbert

“Vivid and compelling, this book shows what life will be like in a warming world. Essential reading for anyone who’s planning to inhabit the planet for the next few decades.”

Editorial Reviews

Although Weather of the Future sounds like an exercise in speculation, Ms. Cullen grounds her harrowing predictions—extrapolations, really—in "the best available science" derived from an array of climate models, environmental data and interviews with scientists. And her forecasts actually turn out to be an armature for discussing the fallout of climate change (from rising sea levels to more extreme weather) in an accessible, tactile fashion and for examining existing liabilities in various regions and cities, like overstretched infrastructure and dwindling water supplies.
—The New York Times

Michiko Kakutani

This engrossing study predicts global warming scenarios for seven hot spots around the world--and evaluates the responses of communities, governments, and international organizations. Cullen, a climatologist, notes that "just as our brain is hardwired to perceive threats that are most immediate to us, we are hardwired to devote more energy to caring about the weather than to caring about the climate," and that "by the time you see it in the weather... it's too late." With some ecosystems, such as the overtaxed Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, which the entire state of California depends on for water, "people would rather simply hope for a happy ending." In contrast, in the Arctic, the Inuit are responding to climate change and incorporating technology into their traditional hunting methods, and New York City "has decided to fix the climate bug now" with its Climate Change Adaptation Task Force. Despite the worry among scientists that humans will follow "the woolly mammoth, the symbol of a climate that no longer exists," the book presents a surprisingly optimistic view of humanity's determination to come to terms with a daunting future. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

Heidi Cullen’s beautifully crafted study provides the human detail that has been missing from most reports on climate science…This book sets a new benchmark for accessible writing on the likely weather of the future.

New Scientist

This is a woman to whom attention must be paid.

Booklist

In an accessible way, [Cullen] details the Earth’s climate history and forecasts what might happen if we’re not more careful.

New York Post

[Cullen] accepts weather as a local matter, just as Tip O’Neill, longtime speaker of the House of Representatives, proclaimed all politics to be local...The Weather of the Future,” uses a broad itinerary to illustrate the threats she perceives.

Associated Press Staff

Vivid and compelling, this book shows what life will be like in a warming world. Essential reading for anyone who’s planning to inhabit the planet for the next few decades.

Elizabeth Kolbert

In this important and timely book, Heidi Cullen breaks ground...simplifying the connection between weather and climate and bringing the true impact of the problem, literally, right to your front door.

Laurie David