Martha Durr, Director of the Nebraska State Climate Office and a State Climatologist for Nebraska spoke to us about the impact climate change can have on agriculture, animals and humans. She is a Professor of applied climate science in the School fo Natural Resources. Her goal is to deliver science-based weather and climate information to make good decisions. Martha joined the faculty at UNL in August 2009.
Martha has interests in climate variability and change and climate impacts. She said this involves the understanding of what causes and the drivers of variability (on various time and space scales) and how this variability influences historical trends. The importance of how these changes impact society and environment. Some of her projects have involved with interdisciplinary – bringing together researchers from various specialties to study an issue – and climate is a critical component to most all environmental issues. Martha has a strong interest in understanding information needs and often work closely with users of weather and climate information to deliver decision support tools.
The Nebraska Mesonet is a statewide automated network that observes the weather and climate conditions. This network began in 1981 with five stations and now there is 70 across Nebraska. The Nebraska Mesonet is an integral component of the State Climate Office.
Martha told us that many debate over whether human activities are the principal causes of climate change. Today you debate what these changes play out and what actions we need to take to adapt to and mitigate the effects of these changes.
Martha told us that if you talk to our younger people that they are concerned about climate change and how it can affect agriculture crops, farm animals, people’s pets and the health of humans. If you think about it, the weather patterns have been changing for several years. Changes noted globally are reflected in Nebraska, which has experienced an overall warming of about 1 degree Fahrenheit since 1895, the report says. When this is separated into daytime highs and nighttime lows, the trend in low temperatures is greater than the trend in high temperatures, both of which show an overall warming. These trends are consistent with the changes experienced across the Plains states in general, which show a warming that is highest in winter and spring and a greater warming for the nighttime lows than for daytime highs. The majority of this warming has occurred during the winter months, with minimum temperatures rising 2.0 to 4.0 degrees per century and maximum temperature increases of 1.0 to 2.5 degrees per century. Summer minimum temperatures have shown an increase of 0.5 to 1.0 degrees per century at most locations, but maximum temperature trends generally range from -0.5 to +0.5 degrees per century. Since 1895, the length of the frost-free season has increased by five to 25 days across Nebraska, and on average statewide by more than one week. The length of the frost-free season will continue to increase in future decades.
If you think back to 2019 when we had flooding in Nebraska and in 2021 we had tornadoes reported in December, which is unusual, you can see we do have climate change happened, not only in Nebraska, but globally. Just think about how dry it is right now and how little snow we got this past winter, just wait because that could change very quickly.
How can we help in changing the climate, planting trees, recycling, and checking out other ways we can do to help the climate change. Remember the more we can do to make little changes, the better it will help the farmers to make good decisions in their crop planting, taking care of their animals and how this will help us as the environment makes a difference in our health.
Martha told us about some of the classes that she teachers in the School of Natural Resources which deals with climate change.
Thank you for sharing some very interesting information and how we can make a difference.