What Would Cities Look Like With 3 Degrees C of Warming vs. 1.5? Far More Hazardous and Vastly Unequal by World Resources Institute

New data from WRI finds that in most cities, the difference between 3 degrees C and 1.5 degrees C of warming is sizable. We analyzed potential climate hazards for nearly 1,000 of the world’s largest cities — currently home to 2.1 billion people, or 26% of the global population — using estimates based on downscaled global climate models. At 3 degrees C of warming, many cities could face month-long heat waves, skyrocketing energy demand for air conditioning, as well as a shifting risk for insect-borne diseases — sometimes simultaneously. People in low-income cities are likely to be the hardest hit.

Global climate models often don’t produce data granular enough to be usable at a local level. For this article, we produced a global data set that includes data on 14 heat- and precipitation-related climate hazards for the 996 cities with populations greater than 500,000 people using a new statistical modeling method (designed by WRI) that makes it easier to project city-scale impacts from global climate models.

The article unpacks what conditions may look like in the world’s largest cities if global warming reaches 3 degrees C, compared to 1.5 degrees C.