Why We Built This Explorer
Climate projections often live in dense reports and static figures. Our goal with the Climate Futures Explorer is to turn those projections into something you can actually play with: a space where you can move between regions, switch between emission pathways, and feel how the shape of the future changes.
This prototype focuses on two core climate variables—near-surface air temperature and daily precipitation—from CMIP6 scenarios. By connecting a world map, scenario story beats, and linked time-series charts, we want to make it easier to see how “global warming” splits into many different regional futures.
Following the Branching Paths of the Future
The same planet can end up in very different places. On the left, each story beat introduces one CMIP6 emissions pathway. On the right, the map and charts respond: temperatures bend upward, rainfall patterns shift, and some regions diverge sharply from the global average. And all of these futures start from the same world. But they fan out depending on our choices. Therefore, this explorer is built to help you compare those paths side-by-side, region by region.
SSP1-2.6 – A world that pulls back
In SSP1-2.6, strong climate policy and rapid decarbonization keep warming comparatively shallow. Ecosystems still face stress, but changes unfold more slowly, giving forests, crops, and cities more time to adapt before major biome shifts lock in.
SSP2-4.5 – A “middle-of-the-road” future
SSP2-4.5 sits close to our current trajectory. Warming accelerates after mid-century, and precipitation shifts become more noticeable—heavier downpours in some regions and drying in others. Risks for crops, water systems, and fire-prone landscapes start to feel less like “rare events” and more like a new normal.
SSP3-7.0 – Fragmented action, higher risks
In SSP3-7.0, global cooperation stalls. Temperatures climb more steeply, and rainfall becomes more volatile. Some regions face repeated droughts while others see heavier storms, increasing the chance of vegetation stress, crop failures, and abrupt biome disruption.
SSP5-8.5 – The fossil-fuel intensive benchmark
SSP5-8.5 imagines a fossil-fuel heavy world and serves as a “worst-case” benchmark. Warming is fast and large, and the climate system has far less time to settle into new patterns. In this future, ecosystems are pushed hardest: large-scale biome transitions become much more likely, and adaptation has to race to catch up.
Locating These Futures on the Map
Climate change is never just a line on a chart—it’s a pattern on a map. Click a highlighted region or use the dropdown below to focus on a part of the world. The temperature and precipitation charts update to show how that region’s story compares to the global picture.
Global snapshot
Under SSP2-4.5, global temperatures climb steadily from pre-industrial levels to the end of the century. Use the controls below to see which regions warm faster or slower than the planet as a whole, and how their rainfall patterns drift away from “normal.”
Choose a Region, Compare Pathways
Use the map or dropdown to pick a region. Toggle the scenario buttons to show one pathway at a time or compare several. When you scroll through the story cards on the left, the explorer briefly zooms in on a single pathway, then hands control back to you.
How Warm Does It Get?
This chart shows projected near-surface air temperature (°C) for the selected scenario(s) and region from 1850 to 2100 (where available). Higher-emissions scenarios produce steeper curves: the same starting point, but very different destinations.
How Rainfall Patterns Shift
This chart shows projected daily precipitation (mm/day) for the same scenario(s) and region. In some places, climate change shows up as heavier downpours; in others, as subtle drying. These shifts can drive vegetation greening, browning, or transitions into entirely new biomes.
Where We Want to Take This Next
This prototype is a first pass at an “explorable explanation” of climate futures. As we iterate, we plan to:
- Layer in more detailed uncertainty views (model spreads and ranges, not just single lines).
- Highlight regional contrasts more explicitly with annotations and callouts.
- Connect climate projections to potential vegetation responses and biome transitions.
- Refine the scrollytelling so each step lands with a clear, memorable takeaway.
Design Notes & Project Status
What the Explorer Can Do Right Now
At this stage, the Climate Futures Explorer already lets you move between three key pieces: a narrative scaffold (the scenario story beats), a world map of regions, and linked time-series charts for temperature and precipitation. The UI wiring is in place: changing the region in the dropdown or on the map updates both charts, and the scrollytelling column can temporarily focus the view on a single emissions pathway.
Under the hood, we have processed CMIP6 temperature and precipitation data into CSV files that can be loaded efficiently in the browser. We designed a shared charting function in D3 that handles multiple scenarios at once, builds legends automatically, and animates the line transitions so that scenario changes feel like a smooth “morph” rather than a hard jump.
On the visual side, we’ve established a consistent design language: a dark, atmospheric background, lighter card-style panels for content, and color encodings that distinguish scenarios without overwhelming the reader. The prototype now has enough structure that we can focus less on plumbing and more on the story we want visitors to walk away with.
What’s Hard About Telling This Story Well
The hardest part of this project is not drawing lines on a chart—it’s deciding how much complexity to show without losing the plot. CMIP6 contains multiple scenarios, regions, time periods, and model runs, and it is easy to overwhelm the reader with sliders and options. Our challenge is to design interactions that feel curious and inviting, rather than like operating a control panel.
Integrating spatial context is another challenge. Maps are great for grounding the data in place, but they can easily compete with time-series views for the reader’s attention. We are still refining how tightly to couple the map and the charts so that “clicking a region” feels like a natural way to move the story forward, rather than just another filter.
Finally, there is the question of uncertainty. CMIP6 projections are not single, definitive futures; they are families of model runs with different assumptions and spread. Communicating that honestly without drowning the reader in confidence intervals and error bands is difficult. Our goal is to add simple, readable encodings of uncertainty that support the main narrative: that broad patterns of warming are robust, even if the exact numbers vary, and that our choices now tilt the odds toward one branch of the future or another.
Key Takeaways
Warming is remarkably predictable across all pathways, but water is not. While temperatures rise steadily and consistently worldwide, precipitation shifts behave unpredictably, making water risk the true uncertainty of climate futures.
The real divergence between climate scenarios happens after mid-century. Until around 2050, the world looks similar no matter what we do, but after that, our choices today determine whether warming stabilizes or accelerates into extremes.
Mitigation doesn’t just lower warming, it reduces uncertainty itself. Lower-emission futures narrow the range of climate outcomes, especially for rainfall. In other words, acting now not only improves the future, it makes the future knowable.