Portland has nine far-flung sister cities, formal arrangements that focus on trade and cultural exchanges. These municipal partners include Sapporo in Japan, Ashkelon in Israel and Bologna in Italy.

The Rose City’s sister city for climate, however, is much closer to home: Lincoln, California, a small, suburban burgh northeast of Sacramento.

Or, to be more accurate, the Lincoln of today is the sibling of the Portland of tomorrow, based on a study published this week in the academic journal Nature Communications.

The researchers’ objective was to figure out what the climate probably will be like in North American cities 60 years from now. The upshot for Portlanders: If you want to know how warm and dry your city could be in 2080, get in your car and drive south for eight hours.

Or, if you don’t have time for a road trip, check out the study’s online mapping tool.

Mapping tool (University of Maryland)

San Francisco in 2080, according to the study, will be like 2019’s palm-tree-laden Palos Verdes Estates in Southern California. Chicago will be like Lansing, Kansas.

Seattle 60 years from now, meanwhile, will resemble ... today’s Milwaukie right here in Oregon. The “typical winter” in this future Emerald City, for example, will be 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than now.

How accurate can we expect this online tool to be? Well, like with any large-scale climate prediction, we won’t know for sure until we get there. (So bookmark this page and make a note in your 2080 calendar.)

The researchers, led by University of Maryland ecologist Matt Fitzpatrick, figured out what the “normal” temperature and precipitation currently are in more than 500 North American cities and then layered them with climate science’s various models for the future, including the worst-case scenario. They then used “climate-analog mapping” to link a city’s climate today with another city’s projected climate 60 years from now.

Climate-change skeptics surely will consider the study and map results alarmist, but Fitzpatrick insists alarm is indeed warranted -- along with action. The ecologist says one of the project’s goals is to get the public to focus on the actual science, rather than on climate-change politics.

The online tool is important, his study states, because “[m]eaningful visualization and communication are considered key components in raising public awareness of climate change, and approaches similar to those employed in this study have been found to be effective for conveying climate-change information.”

All of that said, the foremost question for us is: If we’re still around in 2080, will we still want to live in Portland? Let’s take a look at recent drone footage of Lincoln, Calif., to find out.

Read the study.

-- Douglas Perry

@douglasmperry