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Thursday, December 12, 2013

Interactive tool predicts temperature and precipitation changes by state and county until 2100

Want to know what the weather will be like in your county in the year 2100? The U.S. Geological Survey and the College of Earth, Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences at Oregon State University introduced an interactive tool Wednesday that predicts temperature and precipitation changes in U.S. states and counties through the rest of the century, broken up into 25-year periods, comparing 1980-2004 to 2025-49, 2050-74 and 2075-99. 

"By merging some 33 different climate models and using new NASA techniques to make them accurate at smaller geographic scales, USGS scientists said they could offer the county by county projections across the the United States for the first time," James Bruggers reports for The Courier-Journal in Louisville. "They said they hope that state and local officials and businesses will use the tool to help with adaptation planning."

Matthew Larsen, associate director for the USGS Climate and Land Use Program, said in a press release: "This product is innovative, user-friendly and invaluable for assessing and understanding climate model simulations of local and regional climate and climate change whether you’re a policy maker, a manager, a planner, an educator or another engaged U.S. citizen. The maps and summaries at the county level condense a huge volume of data into formats that are informative for planning, teaching, adaptation and mitigation purposes." (Read more) To access the tool click here. Maps show how much the average temperature and precipitation are expected to change in each county; here's the national temperature map.

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