Images via U.S. Department of Agriculture

Series: Climate Science And Wisconsin

Climate science is complex. Because changes to the global climate span continents and develop over decades, their effects on individual places and weather events are difficult to pinpoint. But with an ever growing body of historical climate data and sophisticated computer modeling, scientists can forecast how climate change is unfolding — and likely continue to play out — in places like Wisconsin with increasing confidence. In coming decades communities around the state are projected to continue experiencing warmer and more extreme weather. These effects are increasingly being recognized, with winter and nighttime temperatures rising, and heavier rainstorms occurring with increasing regularity. From the environment to human health to the economy, gauging the impacts of a changing climate is an urgent scientific endeavor with implications for every Wisconsinite.
 
The concept of flood recurrence intervals is a classic example of a communication gap that can form between scientists and the public.
From Harvey to Irma to Maria, there have been no shortage of catastrophic hurricanes leaving parts of the U.S. and its territories under water and their residents on edge. But the technologies that track these storms is improving.
Climate change is projected to make the upper Midwest a wetter place as more frequent and intense rains hit the region.
Climate change may give a big boost to dairy farming in the Midwest, including Michigan and northern Wisconsin, a new study of the future for U.S. dairy farms reports.
It's not always easy to anticipate a drastic change in an ecosystem.
Scientists anticipate that shifts in the global climate will affect the Wisconsin's waters, wildlife and more in profound and perhaps unexpected ways.
A Florida State University professor looked to Wisconsin to investigate how climate change might make people more vulnerable to groundwater-borne pathogens in the decades ahead.
The national headlines on global warming typically focus on the recent stretch of record high temperatures, the retreat of glaciers and rising sea levels. For the average Wisconsinite, those effects may feel distant, even abstract.
References to climate change, rising temperatures and the human activities that cause them have been removed recently from a Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources web page.