Futuristic 3-D Weather Graphics Grace the Weather Forecast for 2050

Futuristic and creative 3-D weather graphics like you've never seen before light up the screen in today's impressive forecast for September 23, 2050 released by the Weather Channel. The video was made in response to an appeal by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) to television weather presenters world-wide to imagine a “weather report from the year 2050,” based on the best science we have as summarized in the 2014 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report. If humanity’s current "business as usual" approach to emissions of heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide continues, the average temperature of the Earth’s lower atmosphere could rise more than 4°C (7.2°F) by the end of the 21st century. But what does a global average temperature rise really mean? How would we experience it on a daily basis? Each day between now and the convening of the key 2014 climate summit in New York City the week of September 21, 2014--when the leaders of the world will assemble to lay out the road map to the crucial December 2015 climate negotiations in Paris--the WMO will release a new "Weather Report From 2050" on their website. Today's video from the Weather Channel imagines a future when it wouldn't take a landfalling hurricane to push water levels two feet above normal in Miami Beach--the onshore winds of a hurricane passing 400 miles offshore could cause that level of flooding, due to sea level rise. The report also envisions that the current 15-year drought affecting the Southwest U.S. will continue into 2050, becoming a decades-long "megadrought". On the lighter side, we hear about a new baseball team called the "Alberta Clippers" (named after a type of fast-moving snowstorm that originates in Alberta), and see Jim Cantore calling up hurricane tracking charts on his outstretched hand. It's a unique and impressive effort well-worth checking out, and will air on The Weather Channel's cable station throughout the day today (Wednesday.) I'll be featured in a separate behind-the-scences look at how we came up with the weather stories featured in the video.


Video 1. The daily weather forecast for September 23, 2050, as imagined by The Weather Channel.

Jeff Masters