About Fairwaycast
A free tool that helps golf course managers see how climate change is likely to reshape their courses over the coming decades. It translates broad climate projections into the indicators that actually matter on the ground.
An independent personal project, built in spare time. The views and analysis here are my own and do not represent any employer or organisation I am associated with.
How it works
Search for a course by location, town, address, or current GPS position. Results are pulled live from OpenStreetMap, with an adjustable radius and an optional name filter for busy areas. Once a course is selected, three view modes answer different questions about it.
Climate outlook to 2100
Historical baseline (1970–2000) alongside projections for four future time periods through to 2100, under four Shared Socioeconomic Pathway scenarios ranging from low to extreme emissions. Covers monthly temperature and precipitation, evapotranspiration demand, water deficit, and turf stress indicators, alongside agronomic metrics such as growing degree days and growth potential. A plain-language summary highlights the main risks and opportunities, and a climate analogue matches your course against a curated reference list of around 240 globally distributed golf courses to identify one that today experiences the climate yours is projected to face.
Live operational data
A 14-day forecast with daily high/low temperature, precipitation, reference ET₀, and 6 cm soil temperature, plus frost-clearance windows for the next four mornings. Disease-pressure indicators cover the past and coming week: Smith-Kerns dollar spot (published 5-day logistic), microdochium/fusarium, anthracnose, and pythium blight. A year-to-date anomaly compares the current season's mean temperature and precipitation against the WorldClim 1970–2000 baseline pro-rated to the same span of days.
Generated from OpenStreetMap
Fairways, greens, tees, bunkers, water features, and paths are rendered directly from OSM tags, with no manual setup needed. Works for any course mapped in OSM. Layers can be toggled, and the map exports cleanly to PNG, SVG, or PDF for use in reports and presentations.
Sources & resolution
Baseline and future climate projections come from WorldClim 2.1, using output from the EC-Earth3-Veg global climate model (CMIP6) at a 5-minute spatial resolution. Whilst 30-second data would offer greater precision, the associated hosting costs would make it unfeasible to maintain this as a freely accessible resource.
Forecast and recent-observation data is supplied by Open-Meteo (CC BY 4.0): ECMWF and ICON ensembles for the 14-day forecast, and an ERA5/station blend for the year-to-date anomaly. Course locations and map geometry come from OpenStreetMap via Nominatim and the Overpass API. Full attribution and licensing is in the footer of every page.
The climate analogue feature matches against a manually curated list of around 240 globally distributed reference courses, each with its WorldClim baseline pre-computed for fast similarity matching. The list is maintained to give broad geographic coverage and recognisable reference points; if a particular course is missing from results, it is not yet in the reference set rather than absent for climatic reasons.
What it can’t do
Climate projections are inherently uncertain. Fairwaycast uses a single climate model (EC-Earth3-Veg), which is one of many in the CMIP6 ensemble; different models will produce different projections, and real-world outcomes will depend on future emissions, policy choices, and natural variability.
The spatial resolution of the underlying data is roughly 10 km at the equator, which means very localised effects (microclimates, slope aspect, tree cover, coastal influence on individual holes) are not captured. The agronomic indicators (growth potential, heat stress thresholds, growing degree days) are based on published turfgrass science but should be taken as rough guidance rather than site-specific advice.
Fairwaycast is intended to support conversations about long-term course planning, not to replace expert advice from qualified agronomists, climate scientists, and course architects.
Get in touch
Feedback, bug reports, and suggestions are very welcome.