How has climate change affected your life / plans?

I live in Southern California.

I was born in the area and then right before I started to go to school I moved to Las Vegas so I grew up in a desert. My family would regularly take trips back “home” to see my grandparents and whenever we did I would get upset because to me California was a lush green paradise, especially compared to the endless flat expanses of dirt that is the valley LV is situated in.

Today it’s full of brown, essentially dead brush. And it’s constantly, literally, on fire. The husband and I have literally had to cancel multiple trips because there were no routes to the destination from fire. The greenery can come back to an extent after heavy rain but that’s not too likely to happen. When it does the truly dead brush will still be brown and grey.

The houses I grew up in and around had not been built for air conditioning, and that wasn’t because they were made before it was a thing, but simply because the climate was temperate year-round. Now the years regularly go over 100°F days in summer and even though I am very inland I have become familiar with the marine layer because it reaches all the way over here and makes things extra humid and miserable.

When people talk about the world changing they usually mean the people around them are changing, or maybe the buildings. But my world literally has changed and it’s not going to go back: it’s actively getting worse. The fact that climate change is not the number one thing on everyone’s mind is a sign of just how sick our society is.

I'm in the midwest and I have asthma. I've shifted from running outdoors to indoors on a treadmill due to the wildfires and air quality issues that come with it. It's disappointing since so many gains have been made in air quality since the 80s which has really improved my life.

I've been living in Colorado ski towns my whole adult life. Anecdotally, I've noticed two big things

1. In the summers, I feel like I used to be able to set my watch by the afternoon rain all summer long. We still have a monsoon season, but it seems much shorter and not nearly as consistent. Some days it rains all day, then we'll have a dry spell. Summer campfire bans were occasional, now they seem to be every other year.
2. We've had some really, really bad winters. There have been low-snow winters as long as we've been recording them (I know '77-'78 was supposed to be pretty terrible), but I feel like the "normal" winters are much rarer, "bad" winters are more common, and "big snow" winters are extremely rare.

I love skiing, but I've been considering a move back to the great lakes where I grew up just because it seems like the west is drying out and the midwest/northeast seem like they might do alright with global warming. Duluth and the UP both get nearly as snowy as here, but there's not much good skiing. Upstate NY, northern VT, and northern NH seem like they get decent snow off Ontario, and the skiing isn't great but they do have some small mountains. Have also thought about going to British Columbia or Alaska, but I think they're facing the same problems as Colorado.

I'm in France and my birding season in June was a hot pile of garbage. I'm also nearing menopause way too early at 40 and the hot flashes + the stupidly high temperatures means I have been living in literal hell. It makes going outside even more complicated.

It's been devastating to see the impact on nature. One of the forests I visit frequently suffered from a huge forest fire. I volunteer at a wildlife shelter (also something I've struggled to do this summer because of said heat and hot flashes) and every year the number if animala admitted keeps going up. At one point there were over 100 animals admitted per day. And this was -before- the forest fire.

A small note of hope, it's been heartening seeing the number of people volunteer to help out after the forest fire. Thousands of people expressed interedt in helping. We're still not allowed to go to the affected areas and search for injured wildlife but so many people have provided support whether through equipment, transportation, time, etc.

I live in the UK.

Im late 20's and remember a distinct transition between the seasons as a kid, whereas now it very much feels like a potluck draw as to what the weather is going to be like, with seasons appearing to blur together. We didnt need AC during the summer; light clothing was fine usually, and light bedsheets were enough at night. It wasnt bitingly cold or disruptively snowy in the winters; a nice coat and boots were enough for the hour of snow we had each year.
Now, living on my own, i dont bother cycling my clothes in my wardrobe out depending on the seasons because all weather is a possibility; I'm renovating with a priority on AC installation and temperature retention in the home, with window upgrades, reflective blinds, thermal curtains, etc; if i move in future I'll be taking into account the homes ability to accommodate renewables and AC, and they'll be the first things i install once settled in. It seems very short sighted to not even consider the weather and how it affects us nowadays, but I know its a British stereotype to enjoy a good moan and I'm no exception to that rule. I'd just like to complain about something worthwhile!

Well we had that little heat dome over Europe a little while ago. We also are experiencing a lot of droughts in the past few years where water utility companies have scrambled to make changes to retain more water during periods with more rain. Historically we tried to get rid of it as fast as possible (Netherlands). Next to droughts we also have issues with extreme rain in short periods (no those don't help with the droughts) causing all sorts of flooding issues in areas that are not prepared for it.

We also haven't had a Elfstedentocht since 1997. Which does need a pretty long period of consistent freezing temperatures. So it never was an annual event, but it would also not be thirty years between them.

I live in the southeastern US, and storms/flooding have noticeably intensified. Tornado Alley has also shifted from the plain states more toward the SE, and we've had several deadly tornadoes and a couple 500-year-level floods in the last 10 years. People associate Seattle with rain, but my city gets ~40% more rain than that. Seattle may have more days with rain, but when it rains here, it rains hard. Thunderstorms/torrential downpours/high speed winds/downed trees/flash flooding are a regular occurrence. Woke up to that this morning.

When my wife and I were shopping for a home a couple years ago after having kids and outgrowing our first home, flood risk was something we factored into the decision because there are large parts of our city built in flood plains. Now we live in a neighborhood that is the geographic high point of my city's downtown (which sits in a valley surrounded by mountains/ridges), and our house would survive even the worst pre-dam floods of the 1800s that leveled our city in the past.

It's also impacting our potential travel plans. Now that we have kids, we're on a school calendar schedule, and the summer is prime travel time. I'd love to go back to France since I'm francophone, see all the spots still on my bucket list, but I don't want to spend my vacation in 95+ degree temperatures in a place with no or poor AC. Now we're talking about a spring/fall break trip or maybe something right after school gets out before the heat waves are at their worst.

SE United States

More severe storms, less rain, but when it does finally rain it floods.

We lose power more often and for longer periods due to storms, so we have had to prep for that.

We have to irrigate our garden now because we we way less rain than we used to

We are thinking about paving the drive way because the flooding washes the gravel away.

First world problems really

I live in Texas near DFW (the metroplex, not the airport) and I’ve been here since 2010. So far the only thing climate changes has really truly done to this area is include some 120° days that we didn’t used to get. Today, it’s relatively moderate and only 87°F. Yesterday it was 101. When I moved here, we were in a severe drought. We still technically are in drought like conditions, but we also get rainfall constantly; it’s just that the ground can’t absorb it all. I’ve seen the banks of the Trinity River overflow more than I’ve seen the banks not overflowing.

When I first moved here, the Trinity was dry enough that the area constantly smelled like baking river bottom. I haven’t smelled that particular stench in quite some time.

For quite a while, I was considering moving out of here and heading up somewhere northeast like western New York where I have family, or Central Ohio, where I have friends. But seeing the Canadian wildfire smoke that is happening up there I’m not sure that there would be any point.

I was thinking that being near one of the Great Lakes might be great for if water becomes tight, but it looks like the entire planet is just gonna collapse all at once instead of in pieces like I assumed. Might as well stay in Texas, I’m accustomed to the shittiness I’ve been living with for almost two decades.

We decided to get solar panels a few years ago. We were replacing a slate roof with interlocking metal shingle and decided to get the solar panels installed at the same time. The new roof is cooler (I think) and the solar panels definitely insulate us against some of the variability in electricity pricing. I wish I could hook up LiFePo batteries for backup, but there's no way to do that without switching out the inverter, and that would need to be signed off on for interconnection to the rest of the grid, so no backup for now.

We were thinking about installing a 5-head mini-split heat pump for the house, but the cost was astronomical. I can run window units. We'll live.

We got a Volt a few years back and the power company offers time-of-use pricing if you have a plug in vehicle. It's nice with the solar panels, since our costs are low when we are charging the volt at night and, during the day, the solar panels are selling power back to the grid, so we buy very little electricity at peak rates. The car makes us a net consumer, but it also insulates us (partially) against volatility in the price of gasoline, which is mostly peace of mind right now, as, even at $4.00 per gallon, gas prices are far lower than they could be.

These things are all expensive and I wish the world was such that they seemed more like survivalist paranoia than well reasoned hedges against an increasingly insufficient infrastructure for a world in disequilibrium, but here we are.

Mildly, I guess? I feel like I'm in this weird state of mind where I can't tell if winters are shorter/weaker because of global warming or if all of my childhood / teen memories of very snowy winters are just faulty memory and only remembering the "good" winters. Likewise with summer... has it always been this hot in the summer? I've never been an outdoorsy type, so I genuinely don't know. And have spring/fall always felt so brief?

To be clear I have no doubt that man-made climate change is real, but I can't tell if the impact of that is suddenly becoming greater, or if it's just marginally different and my memory is playing tricks on me.

but as far as impact goes, I don't feel like we've gone outside with the kids as much this summer. It's been in the mid-90s a bit too much for that.

It's probably my dumb brain, but I've been obsessing over how to ensure that the next place I live will be less impactful than average, and resilient against wildfires. City living has been killing me, but since they're efficient at delivering services, I've put a bunch of thought into how to reduce the impact building outside of one has. E.g. keeping embodied energy down, trying to run the potable water system off of harvested rainwater, ensuring that my transport needs are met without hauling a car around, etc.

I don't think I'll ever leave this general area, unless I'm forced out for economic reasons. Doesn't seem right to flee the consequences of humanity's actions (although that's a personal conviction, and not something I expect others to follow); I'd rather stick around and help as much as possible, instead of bailing out when the going gets rough.

I'm trialing a lot of plants in my garden that, by rights, shouldn't be able to grow in my climate. Those trials are going alarmingly well. I just planted my most daring trial yet — a tropical indoor philodendron in a relatively unprotected position (east-facing, partially covered by a deciduous tree that is currently leafless).

It's mid-winter right now (equivalent to late January for those of you in the northern hemisphere), and my roses are still blooming and putting on new growth. On a more annoying note, I'm still having to watch for mosquitoes. We've had plenty of frosts, but no proper killing frosts yet, and I'm starting to wonder if we will this year.

We haven't had a single snow day here since early 2020, even though we had multiple snow days per year every year before that.

Not very much. Probably less likely to live in the bay area than otherwise because it was already always on fire during fall while I was there. Otherwise, I won't travel to central or southern europe during summer months anymore - that level of heat without AC is just miserable.

Not at all really. Though me and my partner have a dream of retiring early in Europe, we won't be picking a place in the very south of Europe as it's already hot enough and will only be getting hotter (Except in the case of Jet Stream collapse which I don't see happening in our lives). Serious climate change is something the current generation of children and their children are going to have to face, not so much the adults of today.

It's definitely affected how I think about places to move to. The place I'm living now feels a bit more moderate over the past five years but maybe that's just because I've grown used to the weather.

Man has it.

I’m in a transition in my life, where I’m figuring out what the next steps are, including where to live.

I currently rent an apartment on the last floor of a building. Because real estate has become stupidly expensive here, many people have started turning attics into apartments. Mine is fairly recent (2–3 years old). For three weeks so far, it reached 35 Celsius at around 2pm and would end up at 37 or 38 at around 6–7pm. Unlivable. I was homeless from 2pm to around 10–11pm. Nights were around 30 Celsius minimum. “Nothing we can do” says the owner.

There is also an ongoing drought because it hasn’t rain in 8 weeks so far. Temperature at 10–20 Celsius above “normal” (we should call it “the past” at this point), rain deficit is 26mm for the last 30 days, air quality is mediocre on the better days, I can smell fire sometimes.

The country I’m currently in will become very difficult to live in over the summer in the next few years. The models predict around 25 days a year of heatwave.

I’m looking to settle and buy a house. I have no idea where to go that won’t be a wasteland in 10–20 years and destroy the value of my house. I can’t afford to buy a second one so this is it, one shot.

So I’m paralyzed and can’t take a decision. I’m trying to move out of this oven apartment that I just moved into a couple months ago, but housing is scarce and expensive here so not much luck.

And since the last heatwave, I feel I am traumatized: I keep the windows open all night now. Temperature drops to 16–19 which is too cold for comfort but it feels like I can’t close the windows because I have to cool the place down even though it doesn’t go above 30 inside during the day (which used to be too hot but now it’s okay and moderately cool)

Beyond that, I’m scared for the future. The idiots in charge still have no clue. The heat causes crops failures, fertilizer is more and more expensive, animals are suffering… my city’s response? They bought buses without AC (because AC is bad and pollutes) that nobody wants to use because it’s 40+ Celsius inside all summer. Anyone who can either rides a bicycle (good) or drives because their cars have AC unlike the buses.