The weather 100 years from now

[Don]

 CryoraptorA303 me neither!  However, the climate will change whether we like it or not!  I suspect southern Britain will be hotter than Barcelona is today in 100 years.

Edited October 10, 2024 by Don

[raz.org.rain]

 sundog it's more than likely that we'd see much hotter and drier summers as a result, and hypothetically drier colder winters. It would basically reduce the maritime influence on our climate substantially and render it more continental. This higher seasonality response would be damaging considering we're used to the moderation that the AMOC brings. There's a feedback known as the cold-ocean-warm-summer feedback which basically does what it says on the tin. We've seen it demonstrated as recently as 2018.

The "mini ice age in Europe" trope is a massively overplayed misrepresentation of what the original study suggested as a possibility, which the authors did clarify was based on preindustrial assumptions. An example of this misinterpretation is the notion of summers getting colder. The literature pretty consistently clarifies that the cooling response would be a winter anomaly. Subsequent analyses have suggested much less severe localised cooling (no surprises that this would be restricted to the North Atlantic Ocean) which amounts to >5°c at the most extreme (far northern Scandinavia) or even less than 1°c (Liu et al., Bellomo et al.). The general consensus is that this hypothetical cooling feedback wouldn't be long term sustainable - warming would eventually outpace it (Drijfhout et al.).

But the elephant in the room is the arguably overzealous interpretation of thermohaline contribution to land surface temperatures under present conditions. When we account for paleoclimate analogues versus geophysics, a cooling response is essentially not possible in practice.

Present carbon volumes are analogous with near warmhouse states and methane volumes suggest we're analogous with an ice age termination (Nisbet et al.). While it could take less than 600 years to see true hothouse conditions (when the remains of the Antarctic ice sheet disintegrate; Kidder et al.), most analysis agree that the Eocene and Pliocene are the most ideal analogues for our near future climate (Burke et al., Gingerich). By the end of the century, it'll be closer to a Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum analogue with potential Paleogene conditions in Western Europe (Naafs et al.). The assumption of reglaciation in response to AMOC collapse is essentially a fundamental factor in post-collapse cooling as the associated reflective albedo feedback sustains the cooling, but at >400ppm, that's not a physical possibility.

Edited October 10, 2024 by raz.org.rain

[Cloud2]

 Don Even somewhere like London would have to warm by over 5 degrees C to be comparable to Barcelona's climate today, I don't see how that would be possible.

[CryoraptorA303]

 Cloud2 By 1961-1990 climatology London's hottest month likely averaged around 22°C average max.

By 2001-2030 climatology it will likely average right around 25°C average max.

Even at current rates of warming, the climate has warmed significantly in just half a century or so. Considering warming is about to rapidly accelerate in response to the copious emissions of the late 20th century (and we're just increasing our emissions even more, so expect warming to keep accelerating for at least 50 more years regardless of anything else we do), London is going to reach a climate comparable to Barcelona today very, very quickly.

[Freeze]

16 minutes ago, CryoraptorA303 said:

London is going to reach a climate comparable to Barcelona today very, very quickly.

Truth is, no one knows what direction the climate will go in 100 years. The weather will always make fools of even the experts, anything can happen!

[Cloud2]

 CryoraptorA303 The rate that London has warmed between the 1961-1990 set and the 1991-2020 set has been around 1.15C and it has done so in a rather linear fashion. London seems very unlikely to reach a climate like Barcelona's in 100 years time let alone "very, very quickly". At the rate of a 1.15 degree warming every 30 years the 2071-2100 set would have London around 3 degrees warmer than it is today, which would admittedly be pretty awful.

[Metwatch]

Likely get closer to a humid subtropical climate. I don't believe we will head towards a Mediterranean climate. Look how much rain we've had in the last 2 years. 

[CryoraptorA303]

In terms of actually predicting what things will look like in 100 years, it depends on several factors.

We'll assume that there are no unusual effects, new climate regimes that currently don't exist, or anything like AMOC shutdown.

Using this, we can now use emission scenarios to suggest what could be likely.

If we were somehow able to get our act together and limit warming to 2 degrees or so, we could expect summers in southern England to warm to about 26/17 or so in July, and for winters to significantly Autumnise and be more similar to Novembers or late Octobers today. Falling snow would be quite rare outside of Scotland and the Pennines and lying snow basically unheard of. A completely snow-free year for the whole nation is around a 1/50 year event. Average annual max is around 36°C and 40°C isn't particularly uncommon, occurring about once a decade or so. The all-time record is perhaps 43-44°C by now. The warmest winter month was perhaps as warm as the average June today. Spring would have a rapid onset and we'd reach summer-like conditions by May. June is like an average July today, the average July is like 2013, the average August is only just a little less hot, September is probably even warmer than June today and it likely takes until mid October to drop below 20°C average in the south.

In the likelihood that we don't get it together, but somehow start acting in time to prevent complete armageddon, we could have levelled at around 4°C by now. Note that scientifically speaking, this level of warming is still massively ting the bed and human survival is very tenuous even at this stage. Were the earth to warm this much, in 2124 we could expect southern England to be at around 28/19 by now in July. April is like a warm June now, May is like a July, June is like July 2013, July and August are both like their present hottest on record but even hotter, September is like August 2020, October is like a stormy August today and winter is nonexistent, being very stormy and mild. 20°C is likely reached in at least half of all winters and the warmest spell has probably reached a consecutive week or more above. Perhaps around 25-26°C has been seen in late February. 40°C is very likely seen in every second or third year and the all-time record is perhaps 45-46°C by now. Snow is completely unheard of downhill of the highest areas of the Pennines and the Highlands, and maybe every tenth year or so is completely ice free in the British Isles with even the Cairngorms seeing no measurable snowcover from one winter to the next. Frosts are very rare outside of the Pennines and upland Scotland.

From here, we start to get to the really bad scenarios. You can assume that by this point, humans along with most extant branches of the tree of life are very, very dead. However different you think you are from other animals, however more intelligent, adaptable, whatever you think you are, you and your species will not survive the major extinction caused by the following scenarios. You are an apex predator and depend on a complex food web that very quickly collapses at these kinds of warmings on the geologically tiny scale of a couple centuries. You along with every other extant apex predator will go extinct if the following scenarios were to materialise.

In the likelihood we don't get it together, and emissions continue rising for the next several decades, which if we're being honest, is quite probable, then it's very likely runaway positive feedback loops will be initiated and by 2124, the globe will have warmed by 6-7°C and isn't stopping. By now, daily maxes averaging over 30°C are likely in London and the surrounding SE, and the Csa climate would be encroaching even into parts of NE England at this point, likely spreading to the Hull area first before reaching Sheffield and then the rest of the East Riding. Summers are getting very, very dry on average across most of the UK, and in the south, winters have reversed course and are getting drier again. It's fairly plausible that a large part of East Anglia and even a sizeable chunk of the central midlands have now reached a Bsk classification. London is probably still Csa for now. By this stage Scotland has stopped getting wetter summers and is starting to respond like England did a century before, seeing drier and drier summer periods and extremely stormy winters. If warming continues then in a couple of decades some of the southeastern lowlands could reach Csb classification. Most rainfall over the year is now convective, with heavy thunderstorms delivering very large sums in the autumn and early winter. Spring is more like summer today and it's at least somewhat possible that May has now exceeded 40°C on at least one occasion. September very likely has. 40°C itself would be seen most years, and a summer that doesn't record 40°C is considered below average. The all-time record is probably in the area of 47°C, and I would bet on it occurring sometime in August. The average summer would be unimaginably hot for the UK by today's standards. Even the coolest summers would not reach 1991-2020 averages. Autumn would be increasingly more like spring today, being much sunnier than it is now and seeing intermittent but very strong convective storms. Autumn and spring would become increasingly indistinguishable aside from the day length and amount of rainfall produced. Winter would be totally nonexistent in any modern sense of the word, and would be like an average wet and stormy early-mid spring today, with intermittent severe storms and regular excursions into the low 20s. A winter that didn't reach 20°C at least once would be very strange. Most would reach 20°C as far north as Yorkshire. The warmest winter day on record is likely now in the region of 27°C, which is comparable to the all-time April record today, giving you an idea of what average conditions can probably be expected. Snow? Forget it. Most years are completely ice free, and the Cairngorms getting a nice layer of snow is about as common as Kent getting a 1987-style snowstorm today, meaning to say that it happens about every 30 years. Frosts are virtually extinct south of the Humber and even Glasgow only gets a handful a year on average. Average SSTs are far higher, and the Mediterranean basin probably sees average summer temperatures comparable to the Persian gulf today. The English Channel is likely seeing average summer temperatures not too alien to what the Mediterranean basin sees now. Overall, while the climate of what was once the UK sounds liveable enough, imagine how hellish the climate is even at what was once Paris, let alone further south than that. They're probably regularly seeing the high-40s in summer by now and pushing 50°C every few years.

If you somehow thought you could survive that scenario (you definitely can't, believe me), your chances of surviving what is probably the worst somewhat realistic case scenario that I can think of are absolutely zero.

Assuming we don't get it together, and the world undergoes a heavy shift to the far right, and begins burning fossil fuels on a scale never even imagined before for the next 50-odd years, a massive cascade of tipping points are rapidly triggered, and the Earth undergoes rapid deglaciation. The northern hemisphere completely deglaciates in decades, all of the world's glaciers are lost on a similar scale and the East Antarctic Ice Sheet reaches a similar point of disaster as the Greenlandic Ice Sheet has in the present day, that is to say it has lost a third of it's entire volume, by the last decade or two of the 21st century. By 2124, it's down to half or even less, and sea levels have risen by a few tens of metres. The Earth has warmed by over 10°C as it settles into a new Greenhouse climate. Much of what was once the UK has been submerged into the sea, and the British archipelago has been transformed into something more resembling the Bahamas. Whatever land remains is a hot, humid and dry Csa, with some Cfa and Csb encroachment further to the Northwest, and Cfb just about surviving on the highlands, with whatever central-eastern areas that survive easily achieving a Bsk climate. What was once continental europe is now an arid, hot wasteland having more resemblance to north Africa or even the Sahara today. Iberia regularly sees temperatures encroaching on the 50s and the record highest temperature in Europe is probably around 52-53°C, comparable to the Arabian desert and Death Valley today. Out of curiosity, those two places have likely reached over 60°C by now more than once, and are completely devoid of complex life. North Africa has likely seen around 55-56°C. The hottest climates of the world probably have average maxima >50°C in their hottest month at this point. Monsoons, hurricanes, typhoons and ETCs are incredibly violent and far beyond what is recorded today. A Cat 5 hurricane would be weak. Cat 2-3 and maybe even 4-force ETCs would regularly reach Europe in the autumn. Heatwaves are absolutely brutal and even areas at relatively high latitudes see days and days above 40°C during sufficiently severe spells. If this scenario has played out in reality, you the reader and your descendents, if you have any, are most definitely dead. Most of the animals and plants you can name without looking it up are dead. Every town and city you can name is a wasteland, left to the fossil record for a future intelligent species, if it ever evolves, to discover.

Choose very carefully which future you would like to follow.

 

As an aside, note that discussion of any potential fall in temperatures by 2124 is irrelevant: Once we reach X°C above preindustrial, we're staying at at least that temperature in all likelihood. The reason for this is CO2 has a very long atmospheric half-life, and while we've been billowing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, we've also been busy destroying carbon sinks - Forest coverage has significantly declined and the Amazon is virtually functionally extinct. Ocean acidification is close to reaching a very dangerous level and any of these scenarios are very likely to include a global anoxic event which will be a disaster for phytoplankton. With those little guys knocked out, the Earth has lost a lot of it's carbon sinks. The final one to fall is the global ocean. As we're burning pits of ancient decayed hydrocarbons, and we have not seen a natural fall in sequestration and release of more "temporary" carbon storages, the ocean already has quite a bit of dissolved CO2 in it. All of these act to greatly extent CO2's half-life in the atmosphere, as if it wasn't already going to take tens or hundreds of thousands of years for anthropogenic CO2 to leave the atmosphere naturally. If the ocean reaches saturation, it will very quickly stop sequestering our carbon and emissions will absolutely skyrocket. At likely CO2 levels by the end of the century, it will take a few million decades for it to naturally leave the atmosphere, if it does at all, as such levels will cause a cascade of tipping points and lead to a new equilibrium where a higher CO2 concentration is maintained.

The above explanation of course excludes things like carbon capture, but as those things on a global scale are essentially sci-fi, it's most likely completely irrelevant.

As said above, choose very carefully which future you would like to follow.

27 minutes ago, Cloud2 said:

At the rate of a 1.15 degree warming every 30 years

Yeah, the problem is this warming isn't linear. It's beginning to increase quickly and it will just keep growing exponentially. It'll take a decade or two for ground temps to start responding to the ever-accelerating atmospheric warming, but it's going to happen.

[Scuba steve]

97 % of those alive today will be dead ,interesting to see but I suspect I won’t smell to good by then 

[lassie23]

 Scuba steve cryogenically freeze yourself and thaw out in a 100 years and see if anyone's predictions were correct lol

[CryoraptorA303]

 Freeze Just objectively not true. The world is warming due to compulsive anthropogenic burning of ancient hydrocarbon pits and we know that it's going to start getting a lot worse very soon.

I understand that it's uncomfortable to think that we're about to initiate a mass extinction, kill off most extant life on the planet including ourselves and it's all our fault, but this is just the reality of the situation. Denying the reality of what's going on has ironically been what led us here, as we knew that this was going to start happening as early as the 70s and at that point had the power to stop it. Now we're stuck with at least 2°C of warming which on it's own is likely enough to initiate a major extinction, and if that triggers a cascade of tipping points, we end up with the mass extinction anyway. We can maybe survive a major extinction if we quickly acted to make sure it didn't get worse and we actually cooperated as a species for some sort of common good. We absolutely cannot survive a mass extinction on the scale of the previous five (six if you count the Capitanian as separate from the P-T). If such an event is initiated then we are going extinct. Humans are apex predators that rely on a huge food web to keep existing, and all apex predators unequivocally disappear during mass extinction events. We have never know any in the history of Earth to survive a single one.

Edited October 10, 2024 by CryoraptorA303

[Cloud2]

 CryoraptorA303 The warming between London’s 1961-1990 set and 1991-2020 set has been very much linear despite a 4 fold increase in the worlds emissions and a one third increase in C02 levels between 1961 and 2020. 1961-1990 was 10.60C, 1971-2000 was 10.98C (+0.38C), 1981-2010 was 11.35C (+0.37C) and 1991-2020 was 11.75C (+0.40C), you would have done well to look at the records before making such an unsubstantiated claim. Also I appreciate your writing about what you think the world will most likely be like in 100 years time, hilarious if you actually believe that but some interesting fiction nonetheless.

[CryoraptorA303]

 Cloud2 We have put so much CO2 into the atmosphere that it's going to take time before oceans and landmasses can actually respond to the increase in CO2. Basic physics.

The oceans are beginning to respond. The last ten years globally have all been warmer than anything else before them. 2022 marked the first time ever that a La Nina year was one of the warmest on record. Both 2023 and 2024 will be the warmest years on record by a silly margin.

Look at all the natural disasters occurring in the last two years. It's getting serious now. The land will start catching up very soon.

All of these things are observational reality, yet you want to blather on about the past 50 years as if this has any bearing on how fast future warming will be.

You prove once again that humans are an absolutely vile species and the worst monstrosity ever unleashed upon the Earth. We would rather be smartarses about previous stats than acknowledge the very serious problem we have caused.

Nature should have disposed of us stupid, ignorant, self-centred apes thousands of years ago before we got the chance to wreck the planet like we have. Our entire miserable existence has been one of destroying every environment we come into contact with. We really need to go extinct sooner rather than later, because as long as we exist, we will keep destroying until we cause a worse mass extinction than the P-T.

[Freeze]

 CryoraptorA303 none of what you wrote has anything to do with that i said, you dont know what it will be like in 100 years, no one does. You can pretend you have all the answers but you don't. I never denied the world warming by the way.

Edited October 11, 2024 by Freeze

[CryoraptorA303]

 Freeze Yes it does.

What we do now has a direct impact on what the future is like. We can either get our act together and try to "limit" warming to 2 degrees or so (not that this stops a major extinction but this is just a given at this point), which means we have a good chance of surviving the next couple of centuries, or we can continue on the path we are on, which means we are at the very least at 4 degrees of warming by 2124 and quite probably higher, a cascade of tipping points are very rapidly triggered and we end up in a mass extinction event that is unsurvivable. There is of course the option of electing people who swear that climate change is either a hoax or completely natural, and we continue the upscaling of burning ancient hydrocarbon pits until we initiate an extinction on the scale of the P-T.

What you're doing is a form of denialism. Pretending that our actions have no impact on the future is going to get us the second or third scenario. Pretending that this poorly worded question isn't about the long-term warming is just willful ignorance. We can't know whether it's going to be sunny, overcast or rainy on October 11th 2124, but that's not what the question is about and you know it.

You once again prove that humanity should have been disposed of thousands of years ago before we had the chance to cause so much destruction. I see it all around me. Droves of people who just can't or mentally won't accept the situation we're in. You and Cloud2 are two of them. So much destruction has already happened and yet so many people want to destroy even more. We don't even realise what we're doing to the world as a species. As we are, we have no hope of abating the mass extinction scenario unless people start waking up, demanding that governments very quickly do something about it, and when they refuse to, dispose of said ecocidal governments through whatever means necessary. We're seriously running out of time to comprehend the situation we're in. Within the next couple of decades it'll be too late for that and the scientific consensus will be that we're a vile species that chose to kill both itself and whatever percentage of the tree of life ends up dead in the next century or two for the sake of continuing a global order for a few more decades that made everyone miserable to begin with. Part of me thinks that's what the issue is: People are nowadays so miserable and directionless under the hole economic model we live in that they really don't care about saving what we have, which is of course either an extremely selfish or an extremely psychologically ill position to take depending on how you view it, considering that we can't kill ourselves without taking many branches of the tree with us.

Edited October 11, 2024 by CryoraptorA303

[Freeze]

 CryoraptorA303 can I borrow your crystal ball please?

[CryoraptorA303]

 Freeze I get the impression that you're sufficiently old that you won't be around to see the worst of climate change unfold, so you think it's largely a joke.

I will in all likelihood be around to see most of the mass extinction occur in realtime, so to me this is no joking matter. It wouldn't be even if I wasn't likely to be around, because I actually care about what life will be like for my descendants, if they will even get to exist at this point.

Are people simply just so miserable in our current global situation that we cannot care less about what is going to happen? How did we get this way? Were we just always like this?

The Earth will not miss us or our antics when we are gone, regardless of whether we stop a mass extinction or not. How does it feel that if intelligent life evolves again, and once they connect our large skulls with the fossilised coastal cities they find everywhere, and the huge spike in CO2 and the resultant extinction, they will come to view us as mindless destroyers?

[Freeze]

9 minutes ago, CryoraptorA303 said:

I get the impression that you're sufficiently old that you won't be around to see the worst of climate change unfold, so you think it's largely a joke

I'm still young, 29. Youre clearly very passionate on this subject, but I certainly don't think its a joke, i just think that nothing is a certainty.

[CryoraptorA303]

 Freeze OK, as you seem reasonable, let me explain it another way.

How are predictions about the future made?

We make predictions about the future through our understanding of present physics. As the universe operates on a cause-and-effect relationship, we can very accurately predict that x cause will have y effect and z consequences.

For instance, while nobody can know for certain what will be going on in billions of years, our understanding of stellar evolution from studying millions of stars over hundreds of years, Solar composition and the extremely well-established age of the Solar System, we can with very high confidence predict that the Sun will leave the main sequence in around five billion years from now. No one will be around in five billion years to check, and anything can happen in five billion years, but all scientific understanding very strongly predicts this eventuality.

In regards to climate change, we have studied ancient climates for a similar amount of time we've been studying stars, and each time a major CO2 spike occurred, the Earth rapidly warmed and most mass extinctions occurred due to this. Anthropogenic activity has increased CO2 levels to those not seen since before the northern hemisphere glaciated in the space of 200 years. No other spike occurred so abruptly in known history. From also observing the palaeontological history of Earth, we can observe the effects spikes in greenhouse gases tend to have on the planet. Using this knowledge, along with knowledge from planetary geology regarding carbon cycles, we can very accurately predict that xppm of CO2 has y effect and z consequences.

Scientists are not just making educated guesses, they are taking all of this into consideration and using it to map probable futures based on xppm of CO2. 100 years is really not long enough for unrelated factors to throw a spanner into the works.

[raz.org.rain]

20 hours ago, CryoraptorA303 said:

Whatever land remains is a hot, humid and dry Csa, with some Cfa and Csb encroachment further to the Northwest, and Cfb just about surviving on the highlands, with whatever central-eastern areas that survive easily achieving a Bsk climate

Mark Lynas published research some years ago that suggested something along these lines.

[CryoraptorA303]

 raz.org.rain Assuming the worst case scenario of 10+°C?

It must be said that this sort of warming in just a century or two would produce the worst mass extinction event since the P-T. Interestingly enough, the P-T was the only other extinction in history that was associated with the mass burning of fossil fuels. Essentially, where the Siberian traps erupted was right over peat forests and coal deposits, which meant that along with the raw increase of CO2 from the intense volcanism, said peat forests and coal deposits also rapidly burned and spewed CO2 into the atmosphere.

Will the Anthropocene/Quatenary/Anthropogene/whatever future intelligent species that evolve after us call the extinction be as bad as the P-T? Probably not. That extinction saw repeated heat spikes of ~8°C over around a thousand years for a few million years, leading to repeated pulses of extinction. Almost everything alive went extinct. Had just a few hundred more ppm of CO2 been released, we wouldn't be here right now as multicellular life woud've been completely extinguished.

However, the kinds of scenarios we're talking about, in tandem with whatever other environmental disasters we're causing, have the capability to produce the worst mass extinction since that event and possibly the second worse ever. Were we to really take the worst path possible and ended up causing the 10+°C of warming in a couple centuries, this has the potential to be even worse than the P-T, as almost everything alive could be killed in this scenario.

However, that's the absolute worst case scenario. What's more likely is a warming of 6-8°C, which is still an extinction level event and then some, and then a more gradual rise to around 10°C above preindustrial values over another few centuries or so as the Earth settles into a new greenhouse equlibrium. This isn't to say that we should attempt surviving this, as this sort of rapid warming has a near 100% chance of producing an extinction event comparable to the T-J or K-Pg, in which no apex predators survives, which strongly suggests such a situation is unsurvivable for humans too. Not to mention, such an extinction spells death for a huge percentage of life currently extant. That should be reason enough to prevent such a scenario even if our own continued existence wasn't at stake.

A fairly little-mentioned detail is the current ecosystem is particularly vulnerable to extinction events due to the symbiosis between pollinators and angiosperms. Most plant species presently extant are angiosperms, and a huge number of these rely on insect and bird pollinators for reproduction. Currently pollinators of all kinds are under serious threat, most notably bees, thanks to the combined forces of climate change, pesticide usage (seriously, just employ spiders!) and habitat destruction. A major pollinator die-off would be absolutely devastating for the ecosystem and would spell mass extinction overnight for everything that relies on them and their plants, a group that includes humans. Future archaeologists of the next intelligent species to evolve, if they do, would likely identify the collapse in pollinator populations as a major catalyst for the mass extinction as a secondary effect of our other efforts.

[WYorksWeather]

I'm going to cheat slightly, because I think predicting out to 2100 and beyond is just bonkers - so much depends on future policies and uncertainties, so it just becomes a political discussion. It's much easier to try to predict the social and political trends feeding into warming up until about 2050, so that is what I'll go for.

I expect that by 2050, the climate of Great Britain will generally be significantly warmer across all areas, with further large decreases in winter snowfall and frosts. The major climatic features will still exist, so cold snaps will still happen from time to time but they will become rarer and less notable relative to now.

In terms of the more detailed outlook, I would expect that across the year, annual average temperatures for 2041-2070 will be around 2.0C above the 1991-2020 average. This will be made up of increases of 2.5C in the colder half of the year, and 1.5C in the warmer half, mainly due to the fact that areas to our north will warm much more rapidly than those to our south.

In terms of extremes, I would expect more frequent severe winter storms which due to the warmer seas will in particular deliver a greater risk of flooding due to heavy rain. The average summer will be like 2018. Significantly warmer and drier than current averages.

For annual maxima and records, I'd expect that virtually all remaining warm records have been broken by this point. Long stretches with at least one station recording 30C in summer become very common, with the record having extended to over 30 consecutive days. The record for annual max is 42C, and the average annual max is 37C.

[Brad in Kent]

Let's face it, nobody truly knows what's going to happen, so we can only guess based on what we know now and have seen from 100 years ago to the present day. The main question of course is to what extent our climate will change; will it still resemble what we have now (say northern France) or will it have totally changed to the point of being unrecognisable (a tropical climate)?

If we want to have a guess of what's to come on the ground, we need to look to the south and west of the UK as the climate types in Europe are drifting northeastwards. In the near future, we'll be like Brittany before then becoming like northwest Spain and then ultimately the Azores by the 22nd century. All these places are characterised by having a warm, oceanic climate. Winter temperatures tend to be in the low-mid teens with summers being breezy and showery with temperatures in the low-mid twenties. 

All the predictions are quite uniform for winter, which will be very wet, very cloudy and very mild with a strong +NAO and jetstream. Any exception to this will be SSWs but by then Scandinavia will be like the UK is now so no deep cold to tap into, just temperatures perhaps going into the single digits instead.

Summers to me are harder to predict because we don't know how it's all going to respond to the extra energy. Personally, based on recent examples and those locations mentioned above, I don't think we'll be having hot and dry summers where we're probably topping out, especially for the north and west of the UK/Ireland. You need high pressure over or just to the east of the UK and a more energised climate system will prevent heights building in northern Europe, with the Med hogging the heat and sun as it's done in recent years. The pattern will likely get more westerly with the noticeable decrease of lighting in the UK being a symptom of this. Who knows though, I'd like to think we'll benefit from the extra heat on the continent!

For a flavour, you can have a look at these locations:

For a near future climate, say by 2050 - Rennes - Wikipedia

For a mid future climate, say by 2080 - A Coruña - Wikipedia

For a 100 years away - Santa Cruz das Flores - Wikipedia

 

[Ciarán]

For the record, most places will stay Cfb just warmer overall with more seasonal rainfall fluctuations. Low lying areas of coastal Hampshire and Dorset and Isle of White will be Csb by 2100 as it's sheltered from basically all rain bearing wind directions including Kent clippers. Worst case scenario shows London becoming Cfa with hot, wet and probably thundery summers (presumably because of urban heat effect). The lowest lying areas of the fens may become so dry that they become on the wetter end of 'cold semi arid" in worst case.

[Met4Cast]

A group of people on VisionWeather, a new holographic weather community will be watching the 06z AI-GFS roll out, unfortunately it looks like yet another northerly toppler with sleet limited to the higher ground of Scotland. It's been 14 years since the last widespread snow event, the great snow storm of 2110 where parts of London saw 1.4CM of snow, much of the Midlands were gridlocked with as much as 2CM being recorded in the worst impacted areas. They say in the old days snow was measured in feet but I think that's crazy talk.

Summer of 2116 was one to remember with temperatures reaching a blistering 44.8C, a new all time temperature record for the UK.