Climate Change at the Neighborhood Level

Most climate maps break down the world into grid squares 200 kilometers wide. That's great for creating a regional picture, but too big a brush to paint what's happening at the city and neighborhood levels. New work coming out of the UCLA Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences greatly improves that resolution, predicting temperature changes in grid sections just two kilometers wide in the Los Angeles region.

The new report, Mid-Century Warming in the Los Angeles Region [PDF], finds that climate change will likely affect some parts of Los Angeles more heavily than others, with potential temperature increases of between 1.7 and 7.5 degrees Fahrenheit under a business-as-usual scenario. Inland areas and places at high elevation are predicted to see temperatures rise 20 to 50 percent more than areas near the coast or within the L.A. basin.