Indiana’s Past & Future Climate Assessed
Indiana’s Past & Future Climate: A Report from the Indiana Climate Change Impacts Assessment (IN CCIA)
Indiana’s climate is changing. Temperatures are rising, more precipitation is falling and the last spring frost of the year has been getting steadily earlier.
The data, going in some cases back to 1895, show clear trends, and there are no signs of them stopping or reversing. In some cases, these have been slow progressions. But the speed with which these changes occur has increased significantly in recent decades.
Projections show the pace picking up even more speed as heat-trapping gases, produced by humans burning fossil fuels, continue accumulating in the atmosphere. Indiana will continue to warm, more precipitation will fall, and extremely hot days will be common in many parts of the state. These changing climate patterns affect us individually and affect many aspects of our society, including human health, public infrastructure, water resources, agriculture, energy use, urban environments, and ecosystems.
This report from the Indiana Climate Change Impacts Assessment (IN CCIA) describes historical climate trends from more than a century of data and future projections that detail the ways in which our climate will continue to change.