Color my heat-exhausted red face jealous when I hear someone in the springtime tell me they’ll be “summering” in cooler climes -- seeking a mountain manse in Aspen, a cliff cottage in Portland, or perhaps a Berkshires bungalow. Anything to escape the Houston heat! Even if you can afford it, such a summer retreat may be hard to come by in the next several decades.
We’re talking 2100, but as time ticks on that doesn’t really seem so far away, does it? Children born today will hopefully see that century mark and, in fact, the way medicine keeps progressing, even a few college kids could get there! So this blog is for them, because they need to start thinking about a summer home in Alaska!
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Climate Central studied the future summers of 247 U.S. Cities. Given our current warming rate, what will summer look like in 2100? For instance, that escape to Denver is doomed! Summer temperatures increase almost 9° meaning those summers will be more like a trip across the border!
A little farther north, the Windy City warms up as well with temperatures in 2100 more like Montgomery, Alabama!
An escape to Massachusetts might mean mild and humid over refreshing (although I do like the Carolinas):
So what about Houston? Grab the sunscreen! You can travel the world from your own backyard! Our summers in 2100 will be more like Pakistan’s!
And what does THAT mean? A lot like what our summer has been like! Lahore, Pakistan’s hotter months have an average daily high temperature above 95°F. June, the hottest month, averages a high of 102°F and a low of 83°F. This past May, Lahore sweltered under daily temperatures of 104°. The cover picture today is from 2011, when the mercury rose to 113°! Sound familiar? This may well be our summer standard in the future!
Key takeaways from Climate Central’s study
- The average summer warming by 2100 across all 247 cities in their study is 8°F.
- For many cities, 2100 summer temperatures will be more like conditions farther south -- 437 miles to the south on average.
- For 16 U.S. cities, their 2100 summer temperatures have no equivalent on the same continent; their future summers are more similar to locations in the Middle East and Egypt. That’d be us!
You can explore Climate Central’s forecasting tool and put in your own cities to figure out just where YOU plan on “summering” in 2060 and 2100! On that cheery note for the future, have a safe weekend and try to stay cool. Our next-century triple-digit heat returns next week!
Frank