For an overview of your city's climate, look 500 km to the south.

Want to get an overview of the climate in Washington, D.C.? Take a road trip to Greenwood, Mississippi. In a few decades, as climate change warms the planet, this same stifling risk of de rigueur At D.C. Meanwhile, in Mississippi, the seasons will resemble those of northern Mexico.

Climate change is ushering in a new era for cities in North America. But the future will not be totally mysterious: a new research published Tuesday in Nature Communications shows that in the 2080s, the climate in the country's cities will look like places a few hundred kilometers south of them.

The winters in Minneapolis, Minnesota, will soften to resemble the season as it exists in Lansing, Kansas. Spring in Wasilla, Alaska, can arrive as early as Marinette, Wisconsin.

The warmer winters may seem nice, says Matt Fitzpatrick, an ecologist at the University of Maryland and lead author of the study. But they have a huge cost: it's not just the temperature and the snow or the rain that will change with the change of climate, but everyone's ecological.

"The direct effects of climate change are already quite severe, but natural systems are closely linked to climate," he said. "If these changes happen quickly, these systems will be degraded, which can have huge consequences for forests, water supply, agriculture – all kinds of things, "he says.

One afternoon in a Tennessee bar, Fitzpatrick and a colleague decided to try to chart the future of North America. They designed a tool describing what a "normal" year looks like in 540 cities across the continent, in terms of temperature and rainfall. Then they looked at the models that predicted these same cities every 60 years (you can find your own city with the help of their interactive tool).

They looked at two different scenarios: one in which humans control carbon emissions and reduce them aggressively over the next few decades – RCP 4.5, in the jargon of climate policy. They then examined the "worst case" scenario, in which emissions continue unabated, known as RCP 8.5. (Fitzpatrick points out, however, that recent estimates show that the planet is essentially following this path, which means that the "worst case" could actually be worse).

(Find out how heat waves become more intense and lethal).

The patterns of city evolution were similar between the two scenarios. Most places in the north-east would become warmer and wetter, settling in a moist, wet condition now badociated with the southeast. In the western United States, cities generally become warmer and drier.

The difference was how much. In the best climate change scenario – where emissions start to slow down sooner – cities will look, on average, 300 miles from us today. But in the worst case, this distance exceeds 500 miles.

"What we've found has really shown that reducing emissions can have a big impact on the changing situation," Fitzpatrick says. It's only recently that he and his young daughter have crossed the snow-capped mountains near his hometown of Tennessee with his young daughter. In the worst case scenario, it is far from certain that she will be able to feel the same cold flakes on her cheeks as she turns 60.

Last fall, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a report warned that even global warming of 1.5 ° Celsiua on average could have devastating effects. from 2040.