How could climate change affect you?

Further information

The visualization tool compares the current level with two different climate scenarios:

1. ’increasing emissions by 2040’ (SSP2-4.5) means that the global climate emissions continue to increase until at least 2040
2. ’decreasing emissions by 2040’ (SSP1-2.6) means that the global climate emissions decrease rapidly after year 2020.

The first scenario is considered as the most likely development pathway of global climate emissions. The second scenario is in line with Finland’s Climate Act (423/2022), presuming that the global emissions will be strongly reduced in other countries as well.

The visualization tool illustrates the impacts of climate change by the year 2040 (compared to the present day) with percentages of five different variables for the given location.

• The number of heat wave days refers to days that are part of a streak of six days when air temperature exceeds a certain threshold. In Finland, health hazards and risk of mortality increase steeply when a threshold of 22 °C is exceeded on consecutive days. [1]
• The duration of winter has been defined as the number of days with sub-zero air temperature.
• Heavy rain days were defined as the days when precipitation exceeds the threshold of 15 mm.
• Air quality attributable diseases include respiratory and cardiovascular diseases. The concentration of air pollutants and the disease response are used to determine the so-called DALY figure, which represents the disease burden in terms of disability-associated life years, that is, the number of 'lost' years of life due to illnesses. [2], [3]
• Electricity consumption in households is based on the need for heating, which is projected to change with changing climate in Finland [4].

Vulnerability to climate risks and health issues due to air quality is dependent on the characteristics of your living environment (including factors such as flood risk and the proportion of built environment) as well as your personal attributes (such as age, income level, education, health status, social connections) [5], [6], [7].

Models and datasets

• Climate models: CIL Global Downscaled Projections for Climate Impacts Research (CC-BY-4.0) [8]
• Air quality model: ECHAM-HAMMOZ [9]
• Modelled scenarios and simulations for the electricity consumption and the need of heating: Climate Service of the Finnish Meteorological Institute and [10]
• Flood risk areas and CORINE Land Cover Data: [11]