Unpacking the Nebraska Climate Report
The author is a Senior at Bellevue East High School in Bellevue, Nebraska, and a Director for YEPT.
This story is part of The 89 Percent Project, an initiative of the global journalism collaboration with Covering Climate Now.
For the first time in a decade, Nebraska has released a new statewide climate report.
The report was authorized by the Nebraska Legislature in 2022 as an update to Nebraska’s previous climate report, which was published in 2014. Scientists from colleges and universities across the state, including the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, collaborated on the updated report.
“We decided that we were going to, more or less, build the report, model it off of the latest national climate assessment,” Eric Hunt, Assistant Extension Educator of Agricultural Meteorology and Climate Resilience at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, said. “So we've got an agriculture chapter. We've got a health impacts chapter. We’ve got a social justice chapter.”
The report, titled “Understanding and Assessing Climate Change: Preparing for Nebraska’s Future,” confirms many predictions from the 2014 publication. For example, the 2014 report stated that high temperature days were expected to “increase substantially”. Now, scientists found that four of the top 10 warmest years on record in the state have occurred since 2006.
“All of the things that our climatologists at the University of Nebraska said [were] going to happen, have been happening,” John Hansen, president of the Nebraska Farmers’ Union, said.
Jacki Petrow, an Environmental and Sustainability Studies student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, saw state climatologist Deborah Bathke present the report’s findings at the Nebraska Youth Climate Summit on September 29. Petrow had been following the progress of the report and said she was interested in the main takeaways.
“I learned a lot, I think specifically about some of those different ideas of where we're headed into the future,” Petrow said. “It's scary. Where we're headed is a scary place.”
Climate solutions. At the Nebraska Youth Climate Summit on Sept. 29, state climatologist Deborah Bathke presents findings from the most recent state climate report. Jacki Petrow, who is a student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, attended the presentation and found hope in the report’s solutions for climate change. “Knowing that we still have these reports… and we kind of know what we need to do going into the future,” Petrow said, “that’s something that creates hope for me and hope for the state's future.” Photo by Victoria Bogatz
Petrow mentioned one prediction from the report that stuck out to her: if Nebraska continues on a high emissions path, by the end of the century, the state’s temperatures will resemble those felt in Oklahoma today. A high emissions path could also lead to over 50 days per year with temperatures above 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
“That was really jarring for me,” Petrow said. “To go through that much change is going to be really detrimental to the systems that we set up in this state over hundreds of years.”
One system that the report predicts will be particularly affected is agriculture. Droughts, temperature stress, and greater variability in precipitation may all have negative impacts on crop yields. Additionally, cold winter temperatures are crucial for controlling pest populations, so as the winters get warmer, pests are expected to increase in numbers.
“We were probably less likely to see longer cold stretches,” Hunt said. “So that may cause more invasive species that may cause certain diseases … for crops.”
Agriculture isn’t the only area of Nebraska that will be affected. Urban regions are expected to face costly infrastructure damages from extreme weather and increased flooding.
“We may have infrastructure that's designed for a certain, say one in a 100, one in 500 year floods,” Hunt said. “It's possible that some of those may become one in 10 year thresholds, and we may have to start adapting our infrastructure for those heavy rain events.”
The report also outlines how climate will affect individuals in the state, especially marginalized groups who are likely to face greater risks from climate change. One paragraph describes how members of the Santee Sioux Nation living in the town of Santee, Nebraska have a five-year no-drink order due to unsafe levels of manganese in the city’s drinking water.
“I was glad to see that there was a lot of specific attention in this report paid to underrepresented groups of people,” Petrow said. “I was really glad to see a section on Indigenous people in Nebraska and then also on climate justice, because those are areas that I think can sometimes be underrecognized in reports like these.”
While the report predicts many negative impacts of climate change, it also offers solutions for mitigation and adaptation. For example, regenerative agriculture practices that minimize soil disturbance and erosion can absorb carbon emissions back into the soil.
“We can sequester a lot of carbon from the atmosphere into the soil to help build healthier soils,” Hansen said. “And so agriculture should not be looked at as just simply a source of carbon release, but it should also be looked at as a way to be part of the solution to high levels of carbon in the atmosphere.”
The report also provides suggestions such as collaborating with scientists and Indigenous leaders in climate planning, switching to sources of renewable energy, and promoting water recycling. Overall, the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions is the most emphasized solution.
“If we're serious about reducing the rate of climate change, we have to be serious about reducing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere,” Hansen said.
The United Nations Sustainable Development Program states that roughly 80% of people worldwide want stronger climate action. In Nebraska, the state climate report found that 59% of rural residents believe that acting on climate change is a necessity for future generations. [For more polling results on public perception of climate change, see the 89 Percent Project.]
Hunt says it’s possible that findings like those in the report may lead to more climate-related bills proposed in the Nebraska legislature next year. “I do believe there will be bills that will be considered because of the report. Whether or not they make it through is another story, and a lot of it probably will be contingent upon the availability of funding to do things,” Hunt said. “Wanting to do something and being able to do something are often two different things.”
Unpacking the Nebraska Climate Report © 2025 by Youth Environmental Press Team is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
