Centerspread | April 21, 2022
WHAT CLIMATE C BY ANNA OLP
Design Executive and Photography Executive
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hen discussing the topic of climate change, two common issues that come up are usually melting ice caps or rising sea levels. In the Midwest, we don’t have glaciers retreating or coastal towns that have to worry about their elevation, so why should we care? These effects of climate change are not things we are going to see within our local communities. As easy as it would be to not have to worry about climate change here in the Midwest, unfortunately just like the rest of the world, we will not be immune to its effects. Some of the regional impacts we will feel in the Midwest include global surface temperatures continuing to increase, weather conditions developing more variability, storms becoming more damaging and agricultural conditions worsening. Dr. Walker Ashley is a certified consulting meteorologist and professor at Northern Illinois University with a research emphasis in meteorology, climatology and disasters. Ashley is an atmospheric scientist and disaster geographer with an interest in extreme weather and societal impacts. “When we talk about climate change, a lot of our future is based on models we project into the future. We set the models with more moisture and more heat to simulate a warming environment. We do the same on a historical basis too because we want to make sure the models capture history, because if they can’t capture history they can’t say anything about the future,” Ashley said. These figures and predictions are not easily calculated by just anyone. Dr. Ashley works with computers and
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Page design by Ashley Vanderhoff
