This impacts a lot of lives in lots of ways -- and ways people may not be thinking of with these shifts," Ebi said. "Mapping like this is really helpful because it helps people understand how much their own cities will have to adapt."Urban populations are considered highly sensitive to climate change, the study said. Because most people live in cities, the authors wanted to show people what climate change could mean for them in a real and concrete way.Lynda Walsh, a professor at the University of Nevada, Reno who has written about impactful ways of communicating about climate change, said she likes this approach.This approach "doesn't sentence its viewers to climate doom; rather, they're invited to envision a city they have heard of and perhaps even have visited," Walsh said in an email. "This approach has the potential to spark conversation and creative 'what if we... ' responses, rather than hopeless resignation to a global scenario that's beyond any one community's control.