Major Update to En-ROADS: New Features Highlight Extreme Heat and Wildfires

By Climate Interactive
November 14, 2024

We’re excited to share a major update to the En-ROADS Simulator that will equip you to visualize and quantify climate change impacts related to extreme heat and wildfires around the world. These additions include new maps, graphs, and enhanced forest fire modeling that will enable you to create better-informed scenarios and drive effective solutions.

Three new maps

• Extreme Heat Days
• Extreme Humidity and Heat Days
• Wildfire Danger Days from Warming

As global temperatures rise, extreme heat and humidity events become more frequent and intense, and the likelihood of wildfires increases. Three new Probable Futures maps in En-ROADS provide geospatial context to other graphs and let you compare different climate futures to reveal how policy decisions made now can shape future exposure to dangerous conditions. Each map offers a stark visualization of what’s at stake—and what we can prevent through decisive action.

Five new graphs

• Deaths from Extreme Heat
• Deaths from Extreme Heat by Region
• Outdoor Labor Losses from Extreme Heat
• Population Exposed to Hurricanes and Typhoons
• Population Exposed to River Flooding

Increasing temperatures lead to increased rates of heat-related illnesses and deaths, reduced ability to work outdoors, and more communities exposed to extreme weather. By testing different climate policies in En-ROADS, you can explore which combination of solutions most effectively protects the health and livelihoods of vulnerable populations in these five new graphs.

Enhanced forest fires modeling

• The dynamics of forest fires driven by climate change are now included in En-ROADS.
• The impact of these fires is now shown in the “Deforestation and Mature Forest Degradation” and “CO₂ Gross Emissions from Forests” graphs.

Forest fires driven by climate change lead to the deforestation and degradation of forests and emit CO₂. This feedback loop is now captured in En-ROADS, so that you can now better explore the risks of forest fires from climate change on CO₂ emissions and forests.

As we experience record-breaking temperatures and unprecedented wildfire seasons globally, these new features arrive at a crucial moment. Use them to:

• Demonstrate the local impacts of global climate policies
• Build more persuasive cases for immediate action
• Design more effective climate resilience strategies

We invite you to see these new features in action at our upcoming webinar on Thursday, November 21. Register for the 7am EST session or the 2pm EST session.

We are grateful to the V. Kann Rasmussen Foundation and Wellcome Trust for supporting us in bringing these new features to you. We are also thankful for the invaluable expertise and guidance from our advisory teams, which were essential throughout the development process.