Look for balmier winters and blistering summers in the decades to come. Enjoy the colorful fall foliage in Western Maryland - while you can. And unless circumstances change, prepare to see a different mix of plants, trees and birds by the end of the century, worsening dead zones in the Chesapeake Bay, and for the state that some call "America in miniature" to get dramatically smaller as rising waters push the shoreline inland.
So says a group of scientists who have compiled the first comprehensive assessment of how Maryland could be altered by global climate change.
Their report, a copy of which was obtained by The Sun, was prepared to help state policy-makers and lawmakers develop responses to the sweeping impacts.
The scientists' assessment suggests that some of the expected changes may appear benign at first, but many others could have drastic consequences.
"The good news is we'll have winters like Charleston, South Carolina," said Donald F. Boesch, president of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science and editor of the report. "The bad news is we'll have summers like Phoenix, but with humidity."
Similarly, the report suggests that the state's gardeners and farmers might benefit for the next several decades as rising temperatures lengthen the growing season. But crops and gardens could suffer later in the century as hotter weather dries out the soil and stresses plants.
The report, produced for the state Commission on Climate Change, was researched and written by a committee of 19 scientists from five Maryland campuses, the U.S. Geological Survey and two environmental groups. They include specialists in marine science, oceanography, physics, hydrology, ecology, geology, biology and epidemiology.
The committee drew from new and previous research on global and regional climate change, including the latest report, in 2007, by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an international scientific body set up by the United Nations.
The Maryland group also considered many supercomputer model projections, selected for how well they replicated actual 20th-century conditions in the state.
The commission, appointed last year by Gov. Martin O'Malley, is expected to recommend measures to prepare the public for the unavoidable impacts of already rising global temperatures and sea levels, as well as to limit warming by reducing emissions of carbon dioxide and other so-called greenhouse gases.
