ClimateFuture: a project that shows you the projected impacts of climate change where you live
-
Hi all!
I've been building ClimateFuture (https://www.climatefuture.io) because I was having trouble finding easily digestible information on exactly how climate change could affect a specific location with regard to temperature, flooding, etc. You enter a city or zipcode and it'll show you relevant information, as well as preparation action items if applicable. It shows projections for 3 scenarios corresponding to IPCC RCP pathways (2.6, 4.5, 8.5).
)
The vision is to eventually have this be a centralized place to see projections from a large number of different sources. Right now, I'm getting temperature and precipitation data from the ACIS webservice, but I'm hoping to integrate many more data sources around other possible dimensions of change like sea level rise, coastal flooding, wildfires, natural disasters, and insect/disease spread. I'm having some trouble finding good data sources which can be downloaded in bulk, so if anyone has suggestions on APIs or bulk downloads of public geospatial data related to climate change projections, please let me know.
Future enhancements could also include specific action items that are relevant to your location - e.g. links to local climate activism groups.
Would love to get feedback on the project and whether it seems like it could be useful to you!
Site: https://www.climatefuture.io/
Source code: https://github.com/kevinsqi/climatefutureKevin
-
Very cool project!
I found the data presentation slightly confusing at first. For the question "How many days could be hotter than 90°F?" the answer provided in large bold text (▲8.1 days) appears to be a delta, not an absolute value.
It would probably be a good idea to indicate this by changing either the question text ("how many more days...") or by putting emphasis on the absolute value and removing emphasis on the delta.
-
@nicwaller ah, you're totally right. I'd like the delta to be the main focus because people might not know how an absolute value differs from "normal", but I'll definitely change the labeling to say "how many more days..". Note that the absolute values are still shown below the deltas. Thanks for pointing that out!
EDIT: copy change deployed
-
@Kevin-Qi Nice work Kevin! Agreed the copy could use some work but the value is there.
Here is the NCEI Data Service API User Documentation if it helps!
-
@ecojoy thank you! I haven't seen the NCEI API before, will take a look at that one.
-
the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has some good climatology and CO2 data sets. Let me know if that's helpful at all
-
@Cali-Johnston I'm aware of that one, but I haven't looked into trying to integrate it. Thanks for the suggestion!
-
@Kevin-Qi Great work here! I think "Middle case" could be "Projected Outcome" or "Average" to fully capture the message you're trying to get across
-
@Kevin-Qi said in ClimateFuture: a project that shows you the projected impacts of climate change where you live:
if anyone has suggestions on APIs or bulk downloads of public geospatial data related to climate change projections, please let me know.
Hey Kevin,
I do not have any suggestions on APIs or bulk downloads, however I noticed that the temperature information is only provided in Fahrenheit, would you consider creating a conversion option to the metric system for those living outside of the U.S. to use?P.S. - love the project! I would totally use this to check out not only my own region but to explore other parts of the world as well. Very interesting idea!
-
@briparks yeah, I definitely plan to add a celsius option soon - thanks for the feedback!
-
@Kevin-Qi sorry if I missed it but is there a reason nothing is showing up under "Best case"? Aside from the symbolic message that there is no best case scenario anymore haha but I'm not sure that's what you're going for. Nice project, would love to see its evolution
-
@jparadis haha, it's missing "best case" because the datasource driving most of the info is from the ACIS webservice, which doesn't have RCP 2.6 projections (which falls under "best case"). Depending on the info, some will have an RCP 2.6 projection, which is why I include 3 columns even if they don't have data for "best case". This is definitely not made clear enough though; I'll think of ways to message things better. Thanks for the feedback and encouragement!
-
@Kevin-Qi This is a cool way to transparently surface climate data. It also does a good job highlighting how big changes will be relative to the norm. Any thoughts on opening it up as an external API for other services to consume in turn?
-
@Eric-Vanular Absolutely - exposing an API is definitely a goal of mine! Data collection is the hardest part of this project, so being able to help other people get a hold of usable data more easily is something I'd be happy to support.
There's actually a public API right now that drives the site - it's just undocumented and subject to change: http://api.climatefuture.io/locations?address=san+francisco&year=2080
-
@Kevin-Qi Cool stuff, I'm just checking it out now. How has your project progressed since you first posted about it?
-
@Sam-Hughes unfortunately have been busy and haven't had the chance to work on it, but I'm hoping to once I have more time. If anyone's interested in helping out with data sources or with coding (react/nextjs/express/postgres/postgis), let me know!
-
@Kevin-Qi Have you considered open sourcing the repository? Might draw more interest in getting help that way
-
@olliej it's already open source!
- API server: https://github.com/kevinsqi/climatefuture
- Client (react, nextjs): https://github.com/kevinsqi/climatefuture-client
-
@Kevin-Qi awesome! thanks for linking it