A hypothetical weather forecast for 2050 is coming true next week

Two years ago, forecasters in the UK conducted an interesting thought experiment: What will our forecasts look like in 2050?

The climate crisis is pushing weather to the extreme all over the world, and temperatures in the northern latitudes have been particularly sensitive to these changes. So meteorologists at the UK Met Office — the official weather forecast agency for the UK — dove in to the super long-range climate models in the summer of 2020 to see what kind of temperatures they’d be forecasting in about three decades.

“Not actual weather forecast,” the Met Office’s graphics said. “Examples of plausible weather based on climate projections.”

Well, on Monday and Tuesday, the “plausible” becomes reality — 28 years early.

In 2020, the @metoffice produced a hypothetical weather forecast for 23 July 2050 based on UK climate projections.

Today, the forecast for Tuesday is shockingly almost identical for large parts of the country. pic.twitter.com/U5hQhZwoTi

— Dr Simon Lee (@SimonLeeWx) July 15, 2022

Simon Lee, an atmospheric scientist at Columbia University in New York, noted the striking similarity between the 2050 outlook and the forecast for early next week in the UK.

“Today, the forecast for Tuesday is shockingly almost identical for large parts of the country,” Simon tweeted, adding in a later post that “what is coming on Tuesday gives an insight into the future.”

Continue reading at the source (CNN)