Climate Postcards is an educational simulation — an interactive sandbox where you drag natural, human, and technological levers and watch the planet respond. It's designed to build intuition about how interconnected Earth's climate system is, not to predict the future.
Every slider maps to a real climate driver — CO₂ emissions, solar output, ocean currents, deforestation, carbon capture, and more. Each has a documented real-world scale (tap the info icon on any slider to see it) so you can understand what a single point represents.
Each factor contributes a linear effect on one or more climate outcomes (temperature, CO₂, aerosols, biodiversity, extreme weather).
Effects are summed, then mapped to derived metrics like sea level rise, polar ice cover, and biodiversity health using simplified physical relationships.
Country policy sliders shift outcomes relative to each nation's real-world emissions baseline — reflecting how geopolitical ambition (or lack of it) moves the needle globally.
Tipping-point warnings appear as you approach known thresholds — AMOC collapse, ice-free Arctic, ecological collapse — the same signals climate scientists watch in the real world.
This simulation is a starting point. For rigorous, peer-reviewed climate science, explore these trusted organizations: