Climate change is a big topic, it covers a lot of issues that relate the world affairs, to impacts on environments such as Pacific atolls and the Arctic and Antarctic ice mass.
Those places are a long way from where most of us live.
But what if you could sit at a computer and get an understanding of the impact that global emission levels might have on the climate of your own home town?
What if you are accustomed to living in a town where summers are warm, but not unbearably hot; where winter is relatively mild and the rainfall is plentiful and reliable?
What then if you could see that in one or two decades’ time, if emission levels are at a certain level, your hometown climate changed radically?
Hotter, drier summers, more severe winters?
This is the sort of information Australia’s Commonwealth scientific and industrial research organization (CSIRO) is making available via a series of online tools, designed to promote an understanding and awareness of the science around emissions and climate change.
John Clarke from the CSIRO said the website his organization has launched today is attracting interest from all sorts of people.
"We are seeing a lot of interest from the Natural Resource Management sector, particularly for it as a tool to show stakeholders how different levels of emissions might impact on local climate," he said.
"Other groups who are interested in these figures are people like town planners and architects, who have to factor in what sort of conditions they are building for."
The Analogues Explorer is easily accessed through the CSIRO website and relatively simple to use.
"All of the tools on the website have a simple, step by step set of instructions if you need them, but we'd like to think that the simpler of the tools are easy to just jump straight in and get started on."
So, if for example, you live in Dubbo in central west New South Wales, you could use the Analogues Explorer to consider the likely climate you'll experience in 30, or 50 years’ time, given a certain rate of emissions are maintained.
You may be a little disconcerted to discover that your climate will be more like that of Cobar, Louth, or Bourke; towns which are renowned for long hot summers, cold winters and a lower rainfall.
That could certainly bring home the impact of climate change.
The tools, including the Analogues Explorer can be found at the CSIRO home page.
Source: ABC Online | 8 April 2015
