About Turfsense
Turfsense is a personal project, built in my spare time and offered free of charge. It helps golf course managers understand how climate change is likely to affect their courses over the coming decades. By drawing on open climate datasets and published scientific models, it translates broad climate projections into specific indicators that are relevant to course operations: temperature stress, precipitation patterns, evapotranspiration demand, grass species viability, and more.
How it works
Enter a location and select a course from the results. Turfsense then fetches historical baseline climate data (1970–2000) alongside projections for four future time periods through to 2100, under four Shared Socioeconomic Pathway scenarios ranging from low to extreme emissions. The data is summarised across several views: a plain-language summary of the main risks and opportunities, detailed climate charts, agronomic maintenance indicators like growing degree days and growth potential, and a climate analogue showing a course that currently experiences what yours is projected to face.
Data sources
Baseline and future climate projections come from WorldClim 2.1, using output from the EC-Earth3-Veg global climate model contributed to CMIP6. Course locations come from OpenStreetMap. Full attribution and licensing information is in the footer of every page.
Caveats
Climate projections are inherently uncertain. Turfsense 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 such as 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.
Turfsense is intended to support conversations about long-term course planning, not to replace expert advice from qualified agronomists, climate scientists, and course architects.
Contact
Feedback, bug reports, and suggestions are welcome. Please reach out to me on LinkedIn or send an email.