Steve Vavrus, senior scientist with the Nelson Institute's Center for Climatic Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, was recently interviewed this week by BBC World Service Radio about the Arctic heat wave.

Recent UW–Madison research, as well as experiences throughout Wisconsin and beyond, have shown that existing storm water and flood control infrastructure is inadequate in the face of increases in extreme rainfall. Existing rainfall design statistics are already more than a decade old and seriously underestimate current and future rainfall conditions in Wisconsin due to rapid climate change. The Wisconsin Rainfall Project will use cutting-edge science to produce both “present-day” and “future climate” rainfall statistics, and will create a community of practice to promote the integration of the best science and engineering knowledge regarding climate change and extreme rainfall into infrastructure design and management. The Wisconsin Rainfall Project will be the first major effort of the newly formed Infrastructure Working Group of the Wisconsin Initiative on Climate Change Impacts (WICCI), which has been founded to push WICCI’s prior successes into the critical emerging area of climate and infrastructure.

Feng He discussed how the rising ocean temperatures are forcing ice to melt quicker than the rising air temperature. Especially in the Antarctic, where a large portion of the ice is underwater. He pointed out that if Antarctic Ice Sheet starts to melt,  that’ll cause very large and fast sea level rise, and all the infrastructure probably won't have enough time to accommodate that. 

A University of Wisconsin climate scientist said climate change affects Wisconsin forests, during a lecture for the Nelson Institute Center for Climatic Research Symposium on Thursday. 

A new study suggests the Western Antarctic Ice Sheet is less stable than researchers once thought. As in the past, its collapse in the future is likely. The finding is based in part on the results of a paper published this week in Nature, co-led by University of Wisconsin–Madison atmospheric scientist Feng He and Oregon State University’s Peter Clark, which looks back at the last two time periods in which the planet transitioned from a glacial state, when ice sheets covered large swaths of the globe, into an interglacial state, such as the one we are in now.

With the state-of-the-art computer modeling of the changing climate/vegetation from 140,000 years ago to the present for Africa, Arabia, and the Mediterranean Basin, the study explains when and where the climate was wetter or drier and how the vegetation changed. The simulated environmental changes agree with observed paleoenvironmental data in most areas. The results will help assess whether and how climate, hydrology, and vegetation changes may have influenced human dispersal out of Africa.

The year’s not over, but 2019 will already go down as the wettest year ever across the Midwest and Wisconsin since record-keeping began in 1895. Wisconsin received 41.75 inches of precipitation through last month. The amount of rain and snow so far this year beat out the previous record of 40.09 inches set back in 1938, according to Steve Vavrus, senior scientist with the Nelson Institut's Center for Climatic Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. 

The city of Madison is teaming up with the University of Wisconsin-Madison to identify the problems that come with climate change and ways to adapt to them.  UW-Madison’s Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, the Wisconsin Initiative on Climate Change Impacts and UW-Extension Dane County will present those impacts to help the city plan proactively.