This research project brought together two of my passions: climate change analysis and UNESCO World Heritage Sites (WHS). The continent of Africa was chosen for its geographic size, climate diversity, and susceptibility to both climate and economic pressures. UNESCO had just announced at the end of 2020 that it considered climate change to be the greatest threat to its World Heritage Sites, saying that one in three natural sites and one in six cultural sites are currently threatened.
I created a large model in ArcGIS Pro with some Python scripting to analyze a full year of monthly climate data (3 datasets of air and surface temperature anomalies) from NASA to uncover which areas were currently suffering from the worst climate trends. The model created a spreadsheet as well that contained the climate data and a threat rating for each WHS. The number of sites found to have a high climate threat rating are close to UNESCO’s figures.
