Climatologist warns climate change will lead to more flooding in Nebraska

BELLEVUE, Neb. (FOX 42 KPTM) — State officials say more flooding is in Nebraska’s future if nothing is done to reverse climate change. Sunday State Climatologist Martha Shulski spoke with members of the environmental advocacy group Green Bellevue about how climate change is affecting people in Nebraska now and what they can expect in the future.

“We’ve seen an overall warming.We’ve warmed about a degree and a half over the last 100 years.We know that the warming is accelerating,”Shulski said.

According to the National Climate Assessment (NCA), global temperatures increased by about 1.8 degrees from 1901 to 2016. Shulski said Nebraska could be in store for a much warmer and wetter future if nothing is done to reduce the amount of greenhouse gasses in the air.

“The rate of change that we can expect for temperature is likely going to increase. We are going to see wetter conditions during the winter and spring and dryer conditions in the summer. More variability and unfortunately more extreme events,”Shulski said.

Trends from the NCA suggest that more flooding is likely for the midwest if things don’t change. Shulski says the longer it takes communities to respond to climate change the more costly things will be.

“The National Climate Assessment report, they have indicated that not acting on climate change is going to be magnitudes more costly than just reacting to the changes that will take place,”Shulski said. “It’s going to consistently get worse.Really the sooner we act the sooner we mitigate future climate change, the sooner we look at how best to adapt to a changing climate the better off we are going to be.”

Don Preister, councilman for Bellevue’s 5th ward, said he is concerned about the cost of repairs to levees being passed on to taxpayers after the flooding event in March.

“We know that we’re having to elevate the levees and there is a huge cost to doing that, that’s being split between the county, the city and the NRD.It’s federal tax money, but it’s also local property tax money that we are having to spend,” Preister said.

Priester said the city is working with the Natural Resource District (NRD) to create more rain gardens as a way to help divert storm water runoff. Plants with large, deep roots are placed in depressed landscape to help absorb storm water runoff from roofs, driveways and parking lots and prevent waterways and sewer systems from becoming overwhelmed.

“[It gives] opportunities for people not to put water and flood water into the drains, but to hold it on their own property.Green Bellevue has put a large one, the largest one in the region out at our Eastern Nebraska Veterans Home. We’re filtering several millions of gallons of water that otherwise would run into the creek in an average year,” Preister said.

According to the NCA, without significantly cutting down greenhouse gasses, the average global temperature could increase nearly nine degrees before the end of the century. Shulski said people can help the environment by making small changes in their daily life like buying locally sourced products; taking city buses or cutting back on personal driving or investing in renewable energy options for your home and utilities