Where to Listen:
There is no question the winters of our childhood are disappearing. In 2024, a rainy January gave way to tornadoes in February, flooding in June and drought in July and August.
So what is next for Wisconsin and how can we prepare? In this episode, Amy talks with Wisconsin’s state climatologist about what could be the new normal for our state.
Host:
Amy Barrilleaux
Guest:
Steve Vavrus, Wisconsin State Climatologist
Resources for You:
Wisconsin Initiative on Climate Change Impacts
Wisconsin 2024 Annual Climate Summary
Transcript:
Amy Hello and welcome. This is the Defender podcast powered by Clean Wisconsin. I’m Amy Barrilleaux. If you grew up in Wisconsin or really anywhere in the Midwest, your childhood was probably full of snow forts and sledding, maybe even cross-country skiing and room ball and all those other cool winter pastimes. Flash forward though to 2024 and the winter was full of rain and then tornadoes leading to a spring of storms and flooding and a summer of drought. So what is next for Wisconsin and how can we prepare? Well, we have a state climatologist here to help us sort it all out. In this episode, we talk about what could be the new normal for our state. That’s right now on The Defender. In an age of uncertainty, of drought, and fire, and super hurricanes, it might feel kind of comforting to be in water rich, far from the ocean, Wisconsin. But experts say being water rich is cold comfort when it comes in the form of severe storms and floods, and maybe cold comfort is more like “chilly” comfort when you look at Wisconsin’s winters lately. Joining me is Steve Vavrus, Wisconsin’s state climatologist. Thank you for being here on the podcast.
Steve Thank you for having me.
Amy Let’s start by talking about your title, a state climatologist. It sounds like a big role. What does the state climatologist do?
Steve Well, the State Climatologist directs the State Climatology Office, and our office provides climate services. And what that means is that we provide information, interpretation, and investigation for stakeholders across the state. So we provide data, reliable data, point people to reliable climate and weather data. We help them interpret it, because sometimes it’s very technical information. And then the investigation part is research. part of a big research university, so we try to better understand how Wisconsin’s climate has varied and how it’s trended over time, and then ideally provide decision support tools for people to make better decisions when it comes to their operations.
Amy You talk about stakeholders, so what kinds of people or organizations are asking for climate information?
Steve Well, anybody who has an interest in weather and climate, which is everyone, of course, but some more than others. Agriculture is a really big priority for us. Obviously, farmers depend heavily on weather. The insurance industry is increasingly concerned because of losses related to extreme weather, for example. We get a lot of inquiries from them. And a lot winter recreation enthusiasts wanting to know about ice and snow cover. on our lakes and our ski trails, but it really runs the gamut. Our list of people who contact our office is long and varied.
Amy So what got you interested in climate? Because I know certainly recently climate change has been a huge topic. But if I think about when I was little, I don’t know if we talked about climate so much. So what you into this field?
Steve Well, my interest in climate stemmed from a long-standing interest in weather. When I was growing up in central Indiana, we had a series of really intense winters when I was eight, nine, ten years old, and that really stuck with me. And, of course, Indiana is a big tornado country, so that made an impression. So that’s really what spurred my interest and weather. And then when I got to graduate school, climate seemed like the logical next step. I was interested in environmental issues, and so climate change kind of merged my interest in that and weather.
Amy What’s it like to study climate all the time, to look at what’s happening in the world right now?
Steve Well there’s never a dull moment. That’s one thing we can say. It can be unnerving. It certainly keeps me and our staff on our toes. There’s just so much changeability it seems lately and erratic weather patterns to keep up with. But I like the challenge of it, partly to keep up with the changes and also the challenge in communicating it to the public to try to figure out how we can convey it in a meaningful way, an understandable way, and a useful way.
Amy So speaking of communicating to the public, you come out, this office comes out with kind of an annual look back at Wisconsin’s weather. And when you look at the weather recently, I think the latest year was 2024 that that report has come out. What are you seeing? What was 2024 like for us in Wisconsin?
Steve Well, 2024 was very eventful, starting with the fact that it was the warmest year on record in Wisconsin, also the warmist nationally and globally. So that really stands out. We have records going back statewide to 1895. So the fact, that it, was the, warmest, year on record is really saying something. And part of that was we had the warmest winter on record. If you remember back a year ago, it was exceptionally warm and mostly snowless, especially in central and northern Wisconsin. and we had those freaky February tornadoes, the first documented tornadoes that occurred during February. And then regarding precipitation, we just kept going back and forth. We had the wettest May and June on record statewide. And then by late summer in the fall, we turned into a major drought across Wisconsin. So very changeable in 2024.
Amy When you look at 2024, is it just an anomaly or is it kind of, yeah, this is happening more and more often?
Steve I would say 2024 is an exclamation point on a long-term warming trend. So you can’t just write it off as being a fluke because it was the warmest year, but it’s the warm year on top of a lot of other warm years. And that’s been true not only in our state, but around the country and around the world. The consistency of this warming trend is very striking. And even though we don’t know what 2025 will bring, it may not be the warmest year on record, Chances are it’s going to be among the warmest if the recent warming trends continue.
Amy So we talked about snow and ice. I think it was either 2024 or 2023 when the, you know, the Berkie up in northern Wisconsin had to make snow, which was kind of depressing for the folks who go there and ski it. And of course, everybody’s always thinking about the ice and the lakes. How, I guess when you think of your childhood, you were in Indiana, but it’s still the Midwest. How attached are we to our snowy, icy winters here in Wisconsin?
Steve It depends who you talk to of course. Some people would like to see less of ice and snow, but it really is a part of our culture in Wisconsin. I think Wisconsinites take pride in being cold hardy, and it is something that we have that a lot of the rest of the country does not have. And so this is kind of a badge of identity for us, and there’s implications in terms of recreation. A lot of people like to snowmobile and ski an ice fish. also really important for the economy. Winter recreation accounts for a lot of money, especially in the central and northern parts of Wisconsin, where at least in the past we could reliably count on there being sufficient snow and ice cover.
Amy When you look at trends and how rapidly we’re moving to a warmer situation here in Wisconsin, do you see things like the Berkie, like our treasured winter sports, slowly going away?
Steve The Berkie has had some challenging experiences in the last 10, 15, 20 years, including outright cancelation. Um, last year they, they manufactured snow. They, they had to be very creative in how they, the created trails. So I think that this is going to become more common that we’re going to have to find creative ways to adapt, not only for things like winter sports, like the Berkebeiner, but in other aspects too, we may need to be more creative in, in how we grow crops. looking at more warm, hearty, or more tolerant crops, for example. But across the board, we’re experiencing heavier rainfalls. We’re going to be needing to think how to do stormwater management in a different way. So there’s just a lot of things that we’ve been facing, stress tests, I call them, that we can learn from in the recent past and apply toward improving our resiliency in the future.
Amy But it may be, maybe put those cross-country skis away some day where it’s just not feasible.
Steve Snow is an interesting question for the future so we certainly expect winters to continue to warm in the future as they have been in fact winter is the season that’s warm the fastest in Wisconsin up to now but it’s also supposed to get wetter in the winter and at least in the near term wetter winters could mean more snow they could mean more rain and they could be more of both but to the extent that we’ll be seeing more precipitation in the and warmer. It remains to be seen which side will win that tug-of-war in terms of snow cover and snowpack.
Amy Yeah, I mean, if I think back to 2024, that winter at the beginning, it was a rainy winter, which was just really depressing, I would say.
Steve Yeah, it was very strange that winter indeed. It was much more like early spring.
Amy Yeah, so, you know, we talk about things getting wetter, and I think the Midwest is kind of getting a reputation as a climate change destination, right? You have businesses that are locating here. We are projected to at least have some plentiful water resources, but there’s another side to that, I guess. It’s either a lot, lot of water or nothing. Is that kind of what we’re seeing?
Steve It is what we’re seeing, right? And so a lot of people have speculated that Wisconsin and the Great Lakes may become somewhat climate refuges. And on the surface, that makes some sense. We aren’t prone to major wildfires or hurricanes or sea level rise. But we have our own weather and climate challenges, as we’ve seen recently. For example, the 20 teens were Wisconsin’s wettest decade on record. And we had a multitude of damaging floods around the state. Just a couple summers ago, we had that terrible wildfire smoke from Canada come down and cause all sorts of air quality problems. And Wisconsin’s always prone to heavy rainfalls. That’s sort of the nature. We are blessed with having lots of water, but that can be a curse too when there’s too much of it. So I think caution is very much warranted when people are speculating how our population may change in the future as climate change takes hold around the country.
Amy What about drought? You know, I know we had a big drought in 2012, and I feel like we’ve had some moderate droughts since then. How, I’m sure, hard to predict, is a drought situation? And is it something that we need to be prepared for?
Steve It is. And in fact, more and more research points to not only more heavy rainfalls in a warmer climate, but also more dry spells, including droughts. And so I call this precipitation ping pong, where you go from too wet to too dry too quickly. And we’ve seen so many examples of that in the last two years plus going from flooding situations, even last year in the early spring or late spring, early summer, and then gradually drying out during the late summer and into the fall turning into major drought. And an analogy has been presented recently that I think is a good one and it’s it’s likening the atmosphere to a sponge and and the bigger the warmer the climate the bigger the sponge which means that it’s the atmosphere is able to suck up more moisture from the surface from plants from lakes and oceans and so on in a warmer climate. It’s able to hold more moisture in the air in a warm climate. And then when conditions are right, it’s able to squeeze more rainfall out than it used to. And so this analogy of a larger sponge is consistent with what we’ve seen of more heavy rainfall events, but also more droughts.
Amy So it’s kind of like, you know, huge dry spell, big, huge rain event or floods. Huge dry spell. More rain, more floods.
Steve Yeah, exactly. It’s a feast or famine type of hydrology, and that’s very typical of our summer weather patterns naturally, and it may be that that summertime boom or bust pattern becomes more common not only in summer, but also in the shoulder months and shoulder seasons of spring and fall.
Amy And that can be kind of troubling for Wisconsin because we, as a state, a lot of communities depend on groundwater. So that aquifer system under our feet that we draw from for our drinking water doesn’t refill so easily when it’s a huge flood situation. You know, it needs some kind of time for that water to go down into the aquifer. Are communities preparing that you’re seeing? Or do you hear from towns and cities across Wisconsin trying to get a handle on how we can we prepare for big droughts, big rains cycle throughout Wisconsin?
Steve It depends on the community. Some communities have been more proactive than others and this back and forth with precipitation makes it especially challenging because do you prepare for floods or do you prepared for droughts? If you have to prepare for both that makes it a lot tougher. If it’s unidirectional like we expect for a warming climate at least we know how to prepare. We know the direction of change but with precipitation we do expect in general Wisconsin’s to become wetter. But if it’s interspersed with more of these back and forth situations of too wet and too dry, that presents a definite element of difficulty. In terms of preparation, one asset that we have in the state is the Wisconsin Initiative on Climate Change Impacts, or WICCI. This is a statewide organization that’s been around since 2007 as a partnership between the DNR and University of Wisconsin-Madison. It is trying to help communities better adapt and prepare for our changing climate. And so there’s been recent reports. We have another one coming out next year that provide an assessment of climate science as well as strategies and solutions for communities trying to cope with these changing weather patterns.
Amy And let’s talk about right now. So it’s cold today. It’s been a cold spring. And I think, you know, it’s hard for people to discern the difference between the weather and the climate. So when somebody says to you, well, you now, right now, it feels like Wisconsin to me, how do you respond to that?
Steve Yeah, it is. We think in the present, right, or we think recently. Climate is accumulated weather. And so it’s not just considering what the weather is today, or this week, or this month, or even this year. It’s looking at the big picture. So many, many months or years make our climate. And a good analogy to weather and climate is the analogy of a person’s personality and a person mood. So, a person’s mood is like the weather. They could be upset, they could be happy, they can be sad, but someone’s personality is what they typically are. It’s kind of like the climate is the way the weather typically is in a location. So, even though a normally quiet, reserved person might get very angry at times, so too could a benign climate like San Diego occasionally have a big storm that’s very atypical. And so I would say this is the difference, is climate is the large scale, the large time scale, and weather is the very short time scale of hours to minutes to days of weather.
Amy So I guess our climate personality is getting angrier and angrier, I don’t know.
Steve At least warmer and wetter those are the operative terms where our trends have definitely been getting wetter and warmer in our state
Amy Okay, we are looking at trends and it looks like we maybe are destined to have a climate like Illinois or maybe even Missouri. Is that so bad though? Why should we be concerned about that?
Steve Yeah, so this is a common question with climate change. There’s no inherently better climate. One climate isn’t inherently better than another. But one of the reasons why climate change is a concern is that change is difficult, change is stressful, whether it’s for a society coping with climate change or a person going through a change. And so it’s expensive, for example. If you have to get used to a much wetter climate, for example, the infrastructure was not built for it. A lot of homes in Wisconsin traditionally have not had air conditioning. They haven’t needed it. Now that’s another change. And so when you have lots of these changes happening all at once, it becomes stressful. It’s hard to know what to plan for. And that’s one of the reasons why most of us would rather not see a major climate change.
Amy And then I guess you’ve got your floods, droughts, and tornadoes to worry about on top of that.
Steve Exactly. And some of those, all of those things happen naturally too, but they may happen differently in a different climate.
Amy We’re having, I think, what feels like a very sciencey conversation, you know, talking about data and what you’re learning and why it’s important. But it seems like there’s a kind of a turn against science recently where people may not trust what you are saying as a state climatologist or people may not trust the person who’s telling them to listen. And we need people to listen, so what are you seeing? Are you seeing people kind of pushing back on the data that you put out?
Steve In terms of climate change, I think there’s been a trend for the better. I think there’s just more and more acceptance of the fact that the climate is changing. It’s just harder and harder to dispute. You look out your window, you look at the data, and so on. And there’s also so many different ways we can prove that the planet is changing, even if you think, well, these thermometers may be suspect because of urban warming trends, or this or that, station location moves and so forth. We know so many other ways that to prove that the climate’s changing But one of the things that needs to be done is is not just convey the the facts and figures because our emotions don’t process that we need to be better science communicators and Tell this as a story because stories are things that resonate with people and One of the thing that wiki has tried to do is is to frame climate change in terms of stories interviews with people who have experienced climate change around the state, how it’s affected them personally. And I think that’s a much better way to reach people in a different way, really trying to reach their hearts in addition to their heads through facts and figures.
Amy What are some of the stories that you’re hearing that kind of stood out to you as you started this process?
Steve One of them that we kept hearing was about flooding and different examples of people responding to flooding. There was one person in the Driftless area who said every time it rains hard we drive up to high ground because we’re worried about major flooding. Another person spoke of a terrifying incident driving up north on a road at night during a major flood and worrying about a bridge being out as he was driving. But the story that hit me the hardest and even to day I think about it. was a young woman who said that she and other people of her age are reconsidering whether to have children because they’re concerned about bringing kids into a world of a changing climate and the mayhem that may result environmentally. And boy, that really resonates. That’s something that goes beyond data that really speaks to, you know, I was surprised to hear that climate change is affecting people in such a dramatic heartfelt way.
Amy Do you ever sit down and look at the data and think, whoa, this is heavy?
Steve Exactly. And I think that people, scientists can get numb to the data. I think the general public can get numbed to hearing record this and record that. I just feel, well, like a broken record when I keep saying it. And it becomes difficult to know how to get through because it is easy to just throw up our hands and say, well this is just what we’re hearing all the time. This is just the new normal. We’re just going to have to deal with it. But we need to cut through that because there are things that we can do to change this. We’re not wedded to a certain future climatically, and it really is in our hands. This is a human-made problem, a human made issue, and we humans can do something about it.
Amy I remember before the presidential election looking at a poll, I think it was from here in Wisconsin, that ranked issues for people. And you had the economy, immigration, all those things were at the top and pretty darn low was climate. How does it make you feel when you see, you know, you’re the state climatologist so your issue, so low on what people really seem to care about?
Steve Yeah, it’s distressing, of course, as a climatologist, but I also think it’s understandable because climate is an accumulation of weather and sometimes these changes are not so obvious from day to day. It’s cold this morning, it is cold today. That doesn’t mean the climate has suddenly turned colder. And so we humans have a recency bias. We always think, you know, the present day, what happened last week, what happened year. So I do understand it’s hard to think in the, you know, on a long time scale. I would liken it to how a lot of people don’t save for retirement. They just don’t even think about it because they think, well, it’s a long-term problem that, you, know, deal with it when we get there. But climate change is kind of like that. If you don’t do anything about it in the here and now and tomorrow and the next year, pretty soon you’re, it takes over and you’re dealing with a much bigger situation than you would have had you. taken the time to invest in precautionary measures all the way along.
Amy So, as somebody who communicates about climate change, I do that on the podcast and other places every day, we sometimes hear, well, maybe you shouldn’t mention climate change in this. Maybe you should talk about the economic impact of this climate solution or talk about something else. Because people, sometimes when they hear that this is a climate solution, they turn off. How does that make you feel to hear that? To use the word climate in some situations will make people push back against a climate solution, a solar project or wind project or something like that?
Steve It is unfortunate that the term climate change has become a politically charged phrase, but if you take a step back and think about why is it bothering certain people, and it depends on the person, there are those who may not question the science, but feel like they’re being pointed at, the finger’s being pointed them as part of the problem. I think sometimes farmers feel that way when they hear climate change. They feel like people are pointing the finger at farming for carbon emissions. But I would say, you know, farmers provide food that we all need. So we need to work together on this, but it really does depend, I think, on the person and why they feel a resistance toward it. Is it because they feel like they’re being accused of something? Is it because they just personally don’t care about the environment? Do they think it’ll be too expensive to take climate change mitigation measures? It all depends. So coming at it from a different direction, trying to listen to people, figure out why they may feel resistance can go a long way toward having a productive conversation.
Amy So when people hear, hey, I’m the state climatologist, you know, they hear that this is kind of your whole life, in a sense, your career life. What’s their reaction lately, as we get to be in a place where climate does feel divisive and also feels depressing and feels scary and all these emotions kind of all wrapped up at once?
Steve Well, first of all, I think most people don’t know who the state climatologist is or what one does. And so there I think they’re curious. And so it is sort of a different term for many people. Maybe a better term would be state meteorologist. I think a lot of people might understand that better. But I think there intrigued and wonder what what an office does that call the State Climatology Office and what it could do for the state. And so I mostly I’ve just I’ve been pleased by people just. you know, being interested, being curious about what we do and how we could help. And once I start to explain the climate services that we provide, I think, in most cases, a light bulb goes off and, oh yeah, you know weather and climate affects all of us, it affects us economically, it affects our recreation opportunities, and so forth. And so then there’s a recognition of, wow, okay, this office really could provide some useful services.
Amy Sometimes I think in Wisconsin, with the exception of that smoky summer from the Canadian wildfires, we feel like climate change is happening in California, happening in coastal areas. It’s not really our problem. If you could, I guess, explain to somebody in just a real big picture way why they should care about the climate of Wisconsin, what would you say?
Steve Well, I would say it depends on what it is that most concerns them. What is it that’s at the core of what they care about? Is it protection of waterways? Is it the economy? Is it air quality, human health, protecting our forests and whatnot? And then really explain how climate change affects that. Going back to the example of WICCI. There are 14 different working groups dealing with different aspects of climate change, wildlife, forestry, human health, tourism, and the like. And each one of them comes at the climate change question in a different way. And so depending on what a layperson’s interests are, maybe they’re a home gardener, so they care about temperature extremes. Maybe they’re farmer and they care about variability of precipitation, for example. I think that that’s the way to really get to people to make sure that they care, to understand that climate affects all aspects of our lives, but admittedly, some of us care more about certain things than others. And so having that conversation to figure out what it is they care about is first and foremost.
Amy So I think we’re at a time when the federal government is not only kind of de-prioritizing some climate solutions like clean energy, you know, wind and solar and all the things that go along with fighting climate change. There’s also been a move to kind of, let’s not say climate anymore from different organizations. There’s been a also been move, I think, to get rid of employees at NOAA, for example, which I’m sure you’re aware of since you’re in climate. Are you concerned that we are entering a phase as a country where we’re going to have such a large backslide that things are going to get even more intense on your work, the climate side, when we see the impact?
Steve Well, we are in a challenging time right now. I don’t think that’s a shocking statement. But regardless of who happens to hold power, the climate is gonna do what the climate does. It doesn’t care who you voted for, for example. But in addition, there’s so many other things that are happening besides the federal climate change policy. So for instance, free market forces have. meant that renewable energy has come way, way down in cost over the years and there’s no reason that won’t continue. And so if someone’s deciding whether to put solar panels on their home it really isn’t a political decision, it’s an economic one. LED light bulbs have become so prevalent and so much cheaper than the old incandescent bulbs. That’s the benefit of savings will continue. There’s also a lot of changes happening at the state and local level. in climate policy that happens independently of the federal government, for example. And so that gives me hope is that our eggs are not all in one basket. It doesn’t all completely depend on who happens to be president, who happens to be governor, who happen to be senators, mayor, whoever. There’s actions happening at all fronts, private citizens, nonprofits, all the way down to neighborhood organizations and so forth. It’s a collective effort, and it needs to be. And the more it remains a collective effort, I think the better it’ll be in terms of hedging for the future.
Amy Do you ever feel a little defensive, like, you know, this is what you do is what a lot of people in this building do, is look at climate, and then to see climate change low down on a list of priorities or to hear… I remember there was one politician running for president who mentioned, this was a while back, climate change is a top topic and people were kind of like, climate change? Come on. You know, there’s always been this kind of, or recently, dismissing of climate change as an issue that should be top of mind in the United States. I think if you open the paper right now. Climate change is not going to be the headline. You’re going to talk about the economy, tariffs, stock market, things like that. Do you ever feel like, hey, wait a minute, come on, let’s look at the big picture here and the climate’s impact on the economy of the stock market our day to day.
Steve Yes, so general yes to that question. But I also do understand it. Climate change, even though it’s happening rapidly in a historical sense right now, it still isn’t happening as rapidly as the fluctuations on the stock market, the quarterly returns from corporations and so on. So it’s understandable. I mean people are concerned about paying next month’s rent. It’s understandable that they’d be more concerned about that than the climate 50 years from now. But we do need to think about the way climate change is affecting all of these aspects of things we care about, including the economy. A lot of companies are concerned right now about climate change as an underlying factor in their bottom line. Insurance companies have been losing a lot of money lately to extreme weather events, for example, and it’s important to realize that those costs are not limited to where the disaster occurs. For instance, the wildfires in California, the massive hurricanes down in the south last fall, those costs get spread out to everyone. It’s not just unique to that location. Whatever company happens to have policyholders there, if they take a hit, they’re going to have to make up for it from policyholders elsewhere. So it is important to realize that the climate change impacts anywhere affects us here in Wisconsin.
Amy I’ll have you put on your predictor hat now. We’re heading into what I think is usually the wet and then stormy season in Wisconsin. What should we be prepared for this year as we think about that?
Steve It happens to be Severe Weather Awareness Week, so that’s timely, and that’s an example of a weather scale. So, you know, a tornado hits or a severe thunderstorm, big hail storm, that’s the weather time scale. What we do in our state climatology office is to try to put those weather events into a climatic context. For example, what is our most, the month with the most tornadoes, or which month has the most hail. Things like this. more informative is to try to understand why this happens to be Severe Weather Awareness Week, why it happens in April and not in November, for instance. And so providing this kind of context is helpful from our office, but of course the National Weather Service and emergency managers deal more with weather at a very immediate time scale. For example, we had a big slew tornadoes around the state last year. major power outages in May in numerous communities, including Madison, and so that’s the concern in the here and now is that weather time scale.
Amy So if we get through this spring and summer and early fall with no floods, no super harmful tornadoes, no droughts, how lucky will we be?
Steve Very lucky and and I’ll personally be lucky because I can finally get caught up on my emails. We have to everything has to be put on hold when we get these weather extremes and so we’ll see. We certainly in the last two years plus we haven’t had one of those long quiet pauses when everything is seemingly normal. We’ve been doing this back and forth with rainfall and drought and then predominantly warm temperatures. So I think a lot of climatologists would breathe a sigh of relief if we could finally get a break and catch our breath from what we’ve experienced the past couple years, but it remains to be seen. Our state climatology office is not in the business of forecasting. We’re in the business of reporting and diagnosing what has happened. The difficult job goes to the weather service and private forecasters who have to make the tough calls of what the weather’s to be like in the next day to week or two. And then the seasonal forecast, what’s going to be like through the spring planting season, the summer ahead, and then eventually the winter ahead. And those are much more difficult questions to answer.
Amy But we shouldn’t put money on it, I’m guessing.
Steve Always hedge. Forecasts have definitely improved though. They’ve improved dramatically in the short term. We’re gradually making improvements in terms of seasonal season ahead weather forecast and there is some exciting potential for AI to be a useful tool not only in short term forecast but also season ahead forecast and we’ll see if that pans out but in the last few years there’s been some encouraging research results that suggest that that is the direction we’re heading.
Amy Steve Vavrus, State Climatologist, pretty cool title. Thank you so much for talking with me about all this.
Steve Thank you for having me, my pleasure.
Amy For a link to that WICCI report that Steve mentioned and the latest climate research, take a look at the show notes or log on to our website, cleanwisconsin.org. Thank you so much for listening to the Defender podcast. I’ll talk to you next week.
