Report shows the latest climate change impacts
The Wisconsin Initiative on Climate Change Impacts (WICCI), released its 2021 climate assessment report, Wisconsin’s Changing Climate: Impacts and Solutions for a Warmer Climate. The report is the most comprehensive assessment to date, on the impact of climate change in Wisconsin, and includes details on the continued warming and increased precipitation throughout the state.
The report found that since 1950, statewide temperatures have warmed by 3 degrees Fahrenheit and precipitation has increased 17 percent. Meanwhile, the last two decades have been the warmest on record, and the past decade has been the wettest.
The report stresses the need for significant and rapid reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, and identifies steps Wisconsin can take to store carbon, reduce emissions, and adapt to a wetter and warmer future.
“It is clear that climate change is already affecting our state and will continue to do so in the coming decades,” said Dan Vimont, WICCI co-director. “This report illustrates that all of us are affected in individual ways by our changing climate. And each of us can contribute to solutions.”
Understanding how climate change affects communities is key. And part of that is understanding how climate change disproportionately affects some communities more than others. Low-income communities, communities of color, Tribal Nations and other indigenous communities, are first and worst impacted by climate change.
Including all communities in the climate change conversation will be an important part of ensuring climate change solutions are effective and equitable.
“Climate change tends to disproportionately affect people who either contributed less to the problem or are less able to cope with the impacts,” said Steve Vavrus, WICCI codirector. “It is not our imagination that extreme weather, in general, is getting more pronounced and the price tag for the extreme events is rising.”
While the report outlines sobering data about the future climate, scientists and community members also expressed hope throughout the report. Changes in attitudes towards climate change and an improved understanding of climate change science have led to creative solutions.
Many organizations, farmers, business leaders and community members also expressed hope for the future, as mitigation and solutions are discussed, and implemented.
The report outlines many of these solutions, including reducing greenhouse gasses, increasing continuous living cover and rotationally managed pasture on farmland, implementing habitat management changes, and designing and building infrastructure that accounts for future climate conditions.
Wisconsin’s Changing Climate: Impacts and Solutions for a Warmer Climate report is available at wicci.wisc.edu.
