Climate Chang Maps by the Environmental Migration Portal

These excellent maps provide a detailed spatial pattern of climate change impacts at the continental scale. It overlaps specific climate threats to show hotspots,with population density and megacities.

MAPS

Regional Maps on Migration, Environment and Climate Change

The increase in global average air and sea temperatures, the prevalent melting of snow and ice, the intensification and high variability of extreme weather events, the acidification of the oceans, and the rising average global sea levels all bear witness to climate change. Climate change affects all regions of the world, but its regional and local impacts are uneven, and hard to predict accurately. The local effects and vulnerability of populations will depend greatly on local exposure, development and adaptive capacity, future demographic and economic changes, as well as on mitigation and adaptation policies that will or will not be undertaken in the coming years. The following maps illustrate some of the most prominent regional changes that are already taking place around the globe and their impacts on humans and ecosystems. The observed and emerging patterns of the changing climate already affect human mobility across the globe through slow-onset processes of environmental and ecosystem change, and through sudden-onset extreme weather events, exacerbating socio-economic vulnerabilities. Voluntary or forced environmental migration is likely to rise due to the effects of climatic changes such as increased water stress, greater food insecurity, and accelerating risks related to health and human security.

Climate Change Impacts for North America

 These regional maps show the key climatic risks and impacts (increased or decreased precipitation, increased monsoon precipitation extremes, increasing frequency of cyclones, desertification, increased frequency of wildfires, melting of glaciers and permafrost, coral bleaching); the main consequences (depletion of fisheries and biodiversity loss, negative agricultural changes, reduced water availability, and changes in ecosystems, including in mountain regions); as well as related social challenges (vulnerable indigenous populations, major cities, and densely populated areas affected by sea-level rise and other hazards). The maps also identify climate change “hotspots” - areas which experience a combination of several extreme climatic risks, and which are expected to be affected particularly severely.

These maps are funded by the European Union and created under the Migration, Environment and Climate Change: Evidence for Policy (MECLEP) project, in collaboration with IOM - Sciences Po project on the Atlas of Environmental Migration. Some of the maps will be featured in the forthcoming publication (Presses de Sciences Po/Routledge).

Go to the Website here

Use the maps as the basis for deeper research into the hotspots within each continent.