The Climate Wizard is an interactive map that allows users to view the future predictions for temperature and rainfall as well as historic records for any area in the world; available at http://www.climatewizard.org/ The Climate Wizard allows users to specify analysis area, time period, climate model, average temperature or precipitation, and average or change. Analysis area allows users to select either global or specific regions, such as a state, although increased zoom is available.  Climate model can also be changed to see different prediction levels; low, medium, high.

The interactive map allows users to visualize what a particular region of the world will look like in 2050 or 2080, hopefully educating users on the changes that can be expected. The Climate Wizard also allows users to look back over the past 50 years to see changes that may have already occurred. Modeling precipitation and average temperature may also help local governments and policy makers take climate into account in decision making.

The Climate Wizard was developed in a collaborative effort by The Nature Conservancy, University of Washington, and the University of Southern Mississippi in 2009. The data for creating the predictions for specific regions of the world was gathered from Oregon State University and a variety of other contributors that model changes in precipitation and temperature.  The Wizard uses data and predictions from the IPCC fourth report. Hopefully the Climate Wizard will be updated with the predictions from the IPCC fifth report.

With scientists around the world gathering data in support of climate change accelerated by human factors, the BBC created a game to introduce some of the dilemmas this may present to governments around the world.  The goals of the interactive atmosphere is to give players awareness of what causes climate change, describe policy options available to governments, and give a sense of the challenges facing international climate change negotiators.

In this interactive game, you play as the president of the European United Nations, and you represent part of the Intergovernmental panel for climate change.  The game consists of ten turns, with each turn representing a decade.  In each turn, you choose up to six policies to enact during the decade, which impact the economic standing of the European nations, as well as energy, food, and water factors.  Some policies also have a positive or negative environmental impact, to reduce or cause more emissions linked to climate change.  Linked with these policies are popularity meters, based on how the public likes or dislikes the proposed policies – as the President of the European United Nations your job is to establish a strong policy on climate change while keeping the countries happy with your decisions and healthy so that they will continue to elect you to the intergovernmental panel for climate change.

The policies that you choose from in the game are based on actual governmental policy documents (except for those near the end of the game in more futuristic conditions).  The scale of the decisions and their impact was scaled back to a single turn for simplicity, and even with this simplistic model the game presents the player with good background knowledge on where policy makers may be having the most trouble meeting climate change requirements and ensuring cooperation with politicians from other governments.

When I played the Climate Challenge, I tried to meet every goal set for the climate reduction plan every 30 years (3 turns).  While I was effective in keeping my popularity up for the majority of the game and successfully meeting environmental and emission standards, sometimes my concern for the well being of the people in the European Nations wasn’t as high as it should have been. My results page showed scores of Environmental policy: 89% effectiveness; Wealth: 13% effectiveness; Popularity: 20% effectiveness.

The content of the game does a remarkable job of highlighting different consequences for potential actions, placing the player in the role of a politician fighting to recognize climate change and enact policies corresponding to their impact on reducing human impacts on climate change.  It is easy to get lost in the game, learning as you make policy decisions and seeing the potential impacts on the status of nations having to enforce these policies.

The link to the game is here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/hottopics/climatechange/climate_challenge/

A link to the background and description of the game is here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/hottopics/climatechange/climate_challenge/aboutgame.shtml

This website provides great articles that tie geography, politics, and economics together for places all over the world. Many great pictures and graphics accompany these articles.

http://www.newgeography.com/

Use your knowledge of the lithosphere, pedosphere, and biosphere to guess where in the world these google map locations are!

Think you’re a geography expert? Test your knowledge with BBC Travel’s Geoguessr – the game that proves how well you know the world! As we explore the Lithosphere and Pedosphere and Biosphere check your skills against your knowledge. First, move around using your mouse and figure out where you are. Do you see some rich, red soil? What about volcanoes, palm trees, deserts, or oceans? Using your physical geography knowledge, try and guess where in the world you are located.Then click on the map in the lower right hand corner to place your marker (zoom in to increase your accuracy). When you’re sure, click the “make a guess” button, and find out how close you were!

Over 5 million miles of roads in street view by June 2012.

Unfortunately, because the site relies upon google maps, all locations will be along roadways limiting the world to just the 5 million miles of roads with street view images in over 39 countries.  Once you’ve mastered the basics, challenge my most recent score by clicking on this link. The world’s a huge place – get exploring and post your highest scores in the comments below!

Find out how close you were to each guess!