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Climate disasters like flooding and storms are on the rise across the state resulting in added human and financial costs.
A new report projects will see more intense storms into the future and more rapid shifts between very wet and very hot conditions.
But there are ways to encourage climate resiliency according to Steve Vavres co-director of the Wisconsin initiative on climate change impacts just out with its 2026 assessment.
And thanks very much for being here.
Thank you for having me.
So are the current floods and last week's 24 tornadoes across the state evidence of a changing climate?
I think last week's severe weather outbreak is a combination of random weather variability i.e. bad luck in this case and also climate change.
And the climate change fingerprints are on it because climate change favors the warm humid air masses that we saw out of season.
We typically don't hit 80 degrees and have humid weather in the middle of April.
But if we do, we have the fuel that generates severe storms.
So according to your assessment, what are other trends for climate impacts going forward and some examples of that?
One of the key phrases I like to use is warmer and wetter.
That describes the climate change we've seen to date and also the climate change we're expecting in the future in Wisconsin.
For example, the 2020s are currently the warmest decade in state history.
The 20 teens were the wettest decade in Wisconsin's history.
And we've seen an increasing number of heavy rainfalls punctuated unfortunately with the state record last year, last summer in Milwaukee dumping 14.5 inches.
And your report said something that stood out.
It was March used to be part of winter, but now it's part of spring.
Yeah, and that's an interesting new finding that came out of the state climateology office.
And the reason we talk about it that way is that in the past, starting in the most of the 20th century, the majority of time in Wisconsin, March was below freezing, below 32 degrees.
And recently in the past decade or so, that's flipped.
And now we spend the majority of March above freezing.
And that has big consequences in terms of whether we get rain or snow.
If we get snow, how long it sticks around and when our lake ice melts in the spring.
So these impacts are very measurable, and yet there is still, if not scientific, political skepticism around climate change.
What is that like for a climate scientist?
More and more people understand that the climate's changing.
The evidence is all around us.
It's hard to miss.
The politics enter into it in terms of how serious a problem it is compared with other issues that we're dealing with.
And also what can we do about it or what should we do about it and how much resources should we put in terms of climate change and other issues that we're facing.
So I think that the shifts, there's been a shift in terms of how we talk about climate change and the surveys show that increasing numbers of Americans understand and are aware of climate change.
The report looks at ways Wisconsin can mitigate against the impacts like nature-based strategies.
What's an example of that?
Yeah, so we talk about in the Wiki report, the Wiki assessment, a range of options ranging from what we call traditional mitigation strategies, which is cutting carbon emissions, reducing the source of climate change to adaptation.
And that is accepting that there will be impacts and now figuring out what to do with it.
When we try to promote nature-based impacts, these are things like green infrastructure instead of relying strictly on traditional infrastructure.
So for instance, with more heavy rainfalls, the traditional engineering approach is to build bigger stormwater pipes, increase the size of culverts.
But there are also nature-based green strategies such as rain gardens and green roofs and bioswales and wetland restoration that can all be as effective or more effective and also more reduce the costs as well.
How well does Wisconsin's infrastructure hold up to these changing climate impacts?
It's a mixed bag. One of the ways that we're struggling right now is with these increasing numbers of extreme rainfall because much of Wisconsin's infrastructure was built 40, 50, even 100 years ago, in some cases, for a different climate.
That climate was cooler and it was drier than the climate we're experiencing now.
And so certain ways that we used to manage stormwater just aren't valid anymore. They aren't as effective. And so the infrastructure can't hold up as well.
So is there a dollar figure on how much it would cost to make Wisconsin climate resilient infrastructure and otherwise?
There's not really a dollar amount, but I like to bring up the old adage that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
And a lot of studies show that a dollar invested in becoming more resilient pays off many times over in terms of reduced damage.
And a good example of that was with Milwaukee becoming much more flood resilient over the years.
The Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewage District in particular has done a number of things that have made the city more resilient to climate change and heavy rainfalls.
And the damage from last summer's rains would have been much, much worse without that.
All right. Well, Steve Vavors, thanks very much and thanks for your work.
Thank you.
You guys are still recording that I didn't get to.
And it is.
Your assessment says that underserved and tribal nations bear disproportionate climate burdens. How so?
Yeah, so tribes face some unique challenges from climate change.
One example is that some of their cultural practices are very threatened.
An example of that is manumin or wild rice harvesting.
It turns out that wild rice is very sensitive to weather and climate variations.
Wild rice requires a very narrow temperature range to be healthy and very steady water levels.
And our variable climate patterns of late have made that difficult.
Another reason they face challenges is simply because the tribal lands are generally geographically fixed.
The reservation boundaries, the seated territory boundaries, those were established many, many years ago.
And they're not going to change even though the climate on those tribal lands has changed already and will likely change more in the future.
Awesome.
Thank you.
Thank you for that.
We'll probably use that last response as a pullout for our news site in addition to the interview itself.
Great.
Great. Thank you.
Thank you.
Appreciate it.