Part of the big issue with Climate change, is that it's unprecedented. There IS no predictable outcome when more available energy is trapped in a climate zone. Maybe it will result in more wind. Maybe it will result in more humidity, or less humidity, or new patterns of rainfall and drought. Maybe it will actually lower average surface temperatures in a given region because of changes in how energy cycles. Experts, amateurs, it doesn't matter, it's all just a shot in the dark, until things stabilize.

We don't know, and we won't until things stabilize. The last time the atmospheric gas concentration looked like this, there were 2 continents, and we were approaching Pangaea. The best advice anyone can give you, is guess based on what feels right and hope for the best, and don't expect any trend to hold more than 10 years tops. May the odds be ever in your favour.

I don't think it's possible to predict. The thing about climate change is that it's pretty unprecedented. Just like this "super El Nino" is already breaking records and it hasn't even peaked yet. We can try to predict what's going to happen, but our predictions will probably be at least partly if not fully wrong because we are literally in uncharted territory. We can try to simulate it and see what those simulations say to give our best projections but they really shouldn't be relied on. We just don't know.

As far as hardiness zone, the safest thing you can do is assume that it's going to narrow. Things that were once on the edges of viability may become so environmentally stressed that in the future they are just impractical or no longer viable at all. There may be a corresponding increase on the other side of the spectrum where things that once weren't viable will become so, but that can't be relied on either. It's entirely possible for things to simply get worse as both heat waves and cold snaps become more extreme. There may be places that become completely uninhabitable deserts, for both humans and plants alike. There may only be a few such places, or there may be a lot of them.

I don't think there's any meaningful plan to address these problems in a coordinated way, especially since Trump and DOGE dismantled and ruined most of the people and departments and agencies involved in trying to get ahead of and manage "woke" things like climate change, since he thinks its not real anyway.

Good luck, it seems we're all on our own.

My climate zone recently went from 4 to 5. I am trying to grow zone 5 plants now. I am mulching heavily, to help keep them alive through winter.

The USDA hardiness zones last got adjusted in 2023, and will continue to get updated periodically. They’re determined as an average of the annual lowest temp over a shifting window, IIRC.

It's already changing. The zones are shifting northward.

just want to add that when folks say its unprecedented it not simply about the temp and concentration of co2. which if you go back enough you can find the level we have and will be going to. its that the change is break neck speed on geological time periods. its the same with the species we have driven to extinction. extinctions of the past were long periods of time.

Already in my lifetime my area has gone from zone 9 to 10. Which means now we can grow mangoes. But yeah. It's changing.