Seedlings poke out of flood waters in a field along Bottom Road Wednesday in northern Monroe County. Staff photo by Rich Janzaruk
Get used to the rain, because Indiana’s spring and winter seasons are expected to get wetter.
“We don’t suggest every year will be significantly wet like this year,” said Jeffrey Dukes, director of the Purdue Climate Change Research Center. “But wet weather on the whole is consistent with our projections.”
The past 12 months have been the wettest since record keeping began for the 48 contiguous states, according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration figures. It’s been especially wet in the Midwest, where persistent rain has led to flooding and delayed the planting of crops. Locally, high water has kept beaches at Lake Monroe closed all season. Both historical data and climate models point to increasing precipitation as the new normal.
Precipitation totals in Indiana vary from year to year, but since 1895, average annual precipitation in Indiana has increased by about 15% or about 5.6 inches. The largest increases have come during the past 50 years, especially in the southern and west-central regions of the state. Researchers working on the Indiana Climate Change Impacts Assessment expect this trend to continue.
The Purdue Climate Research Center is leading the Indiana Climate Change Impacts Assessment, a collaborative effort involving more than 100 experts from universities and government agencies in Indiana. They have been downscaling global climate models to predict how expected changes in climate will affect specific sectors of the state.
Richard Phillips, an associate professor of biology at Indiana University, was the co-lead author of a report titled “Indiana's Future Forests.” He summarized the report during a presentation last year at St. Thomas Lutheran Church in Bloomington.
Indiana’s statewide average annual temperature has risen by 1.2 degrees Fahrenheit since 1895. Like the increase in rainfall, the warming trend has sped up, rising by 0.4 degrees Fahrenheit per decade since the 1960s.
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