--- id: communication/climate-shift-index about: label: Climate Shift Index description: >- Climate Central's daily world map scoring, from -5 to +5, how much more or less likely human-caused climate change has made each place's temperature on a given day. tags: - attribution science - extreme heat - temperature - daily map - Climate Central tool: form: 'free web map, daily data files and reporting materials' group: Showing homepage: 'https://www.climatecentral.org/climate-shift-index' licence: >- Climate Central terms of use: free for any non-commercial use, for commercial news use by media organizations and for educational use by accredited educational bodies, with credit (and a link when used online); other commercial use, notably for financial products, needs written permission; no bulk downloading or screen scraping cost: free open: source: unknown data: partly api: partly participation: unknown licence: Climate Central terms of use; the 2022 methods paper is CC BY 4.0 note: >- Daily maps of the index for high and low temperatures, for yesterday to the day after tomorrow, are offered as KML files at fixed links that update each day at 0Z. domains: - climate - people provenance: origin: agent sources: - title: Climate Shift Index | Climate Central url: 'https://www.climatecentral.org/climate-shift-index' - title: Climate Shift Index Global Map | Climate Central url: 'https://csi.climatecentral.org/climate-shift-index' - title: Attribution Science Resources | Climate Central url: 'https://www.climatecentral.org/attribution-resources' - title: >- A multi-method framework for global real-time climate attribution (Gilford, Pershing, Strauss, Haustein and Otto, ASCMO 8, 135-154, 2022) url: 'https://ascmo.copernicus.org/articles/8/135/2022/' - title: Terms of use | Climate Central url: 'https://www.climatecentral.org/what-we-do/legal' - title: >- Climate change in Birmingham, Alabama | Climate Central (a Climate Local city page) url: 'https://www.climatecentral.org/climate-local/41393' - title: Published Research | Climate Central url: 'https://www.climatecentral.org/research' created: '2026-10-23' reviewed: '2026-10-23' reviewed_by: >- Claude, from the sources listed; the technical methods document linked from the index page was not opened status: draft --- The Climate Shift Index is a daily map from Climate Central that gives each place on Earth a score for how much climate change has altered the odds of that day's temperature there.[^1,2] People feel the weather where they live, not the global average, and the index is meant to connect the two.[^1] A reader opens the map, picks a day or a run of days, and sees the world coloured by score. They can switch to the plain temperature or to how far it is from normal, look up a city, and copy a link or a screenshot.[^2] The scale runs from -5 to +5.[^1] A score of 3 means a temperature now happens at least three times as often as it would in a world without human-caused carbon pollution.[^1] A score of 5 means at least five times; such a temperature would be very hard to meet without climate change.[^1] Negative scores mean a temperature has become rarer, as cold days have.[^1] Climate Central gives an example: if 90°F used to come about one June day a year somewhere and now comes about three, a 90°F June day there scores 3.[^1] The index does not say climate change caused the heat, only how much it changed the odds.[^1] If either of the two observation-based methods or the average of the model-based methods disagrees on whether climate change played a part, the score is 0.[^1] Two estimates are averaged. One compares 22 climate models run with and without historical greenhouse gas emissions.[^1] The other, observation-based, uses the past 30 years of daily temperatures and how strongly the local temperature responds to the rise in global average temperature, to work out how often a temperature would come without that rise.[^1] The map draws on NOAA's GFS weather forecasts, so it can show tomorrow and the day after as well as today.[^2] The method was set out in 2022 in "A multi-method framework for global real-time climate attribution" by Daniel M. Gilford, Andrew Pershing, Benjamin H. Strauss, Karsten Haustein and Friederike E. L. Otto, published open access in Advances in Statistical Climatology, Meteorology and Oceanography;[^4] Climate Central launched the index the same year.[^1] The paper describes one model-based and two observation-based methods, and its worked example is daily highs in Phoenix, Arizona, in July 2016.[^4] Gilford, Pershing and Strauss are also authors of Climate Central's [paper on extreme water levels](/articles/climate-central-extreme-water-levels/).[^7] Versions now cover ocean surface temperatures, humid heat and the wind strength of tropical cyclones.[^1,3] Climate Central uses the index in alerts ahead of heat waves and in reports, and its resource page shows meteorologists and science communicators using it on air.[^3] The city pages of [Climate Local](/communication/climate-local/) count each city's days this year that scored 2 or higher.[^6] For broadcast graphics, the daily maps of high and low temperature scores are published as KML files at fixed links that update each day; the page says the link can be pasted "into a Max scene" to get daily-updating data.[^2] Climate Central's terms of use allow any non-commercial use, commercial news use by media organizations and educational use by accredited educational bodies, with credit and, online, a link.[^5] They forbid bulk downloading and scraping, and other commercial use, in particular for financial products or investments, needs written permission.[^5] Each score is one number for one place and one day, short enough for a forecaster to say alongside the forecast.