Under the Weather: How Climate Change Is Messing with Monroe County

You don’t have to buy into the notion of climate change to recognize that Indiana’s seasons aren’t quite what they used to be. But, if you hope to understand why we’re already seeing wetter springs, hotter summers, less snow in the winter, and more numerous and extreme weather events, maintaining even a grudging open- ness to the reality of climate change—and our contribution to it—certainly helps.

In late 2018, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued a special report stating that human activity has
not only caused a 1.8-degree Fahrenheit rise in global temperatures, but, if left unchecked, human activity will continue to boost warming by up to 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit globally between 2030 and 2052. That doesn’t mean the planet will warm uniformly; rather, temperatures are likely to increase more over land masses than over bodies of water. “It definitely has gotten warmer in winter [in Indiana],” says Indiana University Department of Geography professor Scott Robeson. “And that’s actually happening all over the northern hemisphere.”