- [Narrator] Average temperatures in Indiana are on the rise, according to the Indiana Climate Change Impacts Assessment.

(dramatic music) Headlines from around the world talk about climate change, but what does that mean for Hoosiers?

To get a better understanding of climate change in Indiana, we made a trip to the Institute for a Sustainable Future at Purdue University.

- I'm Matt Huber.

I am a professor of Earth Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at Purdue University.

- [Narrator] Matt Huber studies climate science, specifically heat waves.

- [Matt] Early inscrutable.

- [Narrator] He's trying to help make changes for the future by studying the past.

- I've been working in periods all the way back, 65 million years all the way to today.

- [Narrator] Currently, our climate seems to be headed backwards in time.

- Climate change has happened naturally in the past, but it's been caused by changes in greenhouse gas concentrations.

So CO2 predominantly.

We used to live in a world 60, 55 million years ago where there wasn't an ice sheet in Antarctica.

There wasn't an ice sheet in Greenland, the planet used to be much, much warmer and over time, the carbon was drawn down.

It was kind of buried in the earth.

And unfortunately for us, our industrial revolution has consisted of going and finding all that buried global warming and unburying it and putting it into the atmosphere.

- [Narrator] Indiana is being affected too.

- Everything is connected.

Something that happens far away affects everyone and it affects people very quickly.

So there's no way to escape this.

There's no way to run away from it or ignore it.

It'll come and find you where you live.

- [Narrator] For most of the Midwest, the notable effects caused by the heat waves are too much rain and not enough rain.

- And some people might say, you know, "I, these climate change people drive me crazy.

How could you have more drought and more flooding?"

There's longer periods between rains, so more drought, and then when it does rain, it's just rain like you've never seen before.

- [Narrator] With increased amounts of greenhouse gases like CO2 and methane, our atmosphere traps heat and holds more water.

Think of our atmosphere as a bucket that draws up water from the earth.

When it gets full, it dumps the water, rain.

The hotter it is, the bigger the bucket gets, which takes longer to get full and dump the rain.

And when it does rain, a bigger bucket means more rain and often too much rain.

While the impact of this water feast and famine is throwing off a lot of things in our environment, Hoosiers like Matt are trying to figure out what we can do to adapt.

Studies involving land restoration.

Balancing biodiversity and agricultural advancements lend hope to the possibility that we can change with climate change.

And one of those changes is big business in Indiana.

♪ More than corn in Indiana ♪ - [Narrator] The US is the largest corn producer in the world, and a lot of that corn is right around you.

On your trips across Indiana.

Farming was already complicated and it's not getting easier with climate change.

- Farmers are very actively adapting to climate change.

They've changed when they plant, they've changed when they harvest.

A lot of things have changed, but I think we need more aggressive change and more systemic change.

- [Narrator] Work to make corn more resilient is one option, allowing it to grow in more diverse climates and conditions.

But a more diverse growing practice may help even more.

- Sorry, Indiana corn is not gonna save the world.

There's a lot of scientific evidence that suggests that corn will not actually do very well in a warmer climate.

- [Narrator] Most of the crops you see in Indiana don't go directly to a table.

That kind of food is often imported from California.

An area struggling even more with drought and flooding.

Indiana's corn and soybeans are used mostly for animal feed and long-shelf-life products.

Part of a system that needs more work on emissions.

- I think we could be doing a lot better in terms of brewing food for ourselves.

I get very concerned with this.

We are a corn state.

We have to keep brewing corn.

We've been engaging with a number of farmers through a project we have right now called the diverse corn belt, who are right there, who are hungry to be doing something different.

- [Narrator] Fields of the future could look quite a bit different.

Scientists like Linda envisioned cycling in many different crops with the corn and soybeans, adding perennial crops.

They keep the ground covered year-round and even adding trees to crop farms and crops to tree farms.

- We could be planting crops that might be better for climate change, both in terms of how adapted they could be to a changing climate, but also in terms of how much they could help mitigate the impacts of a changing climate.

- [Narrator] Research remains an important part of the process, as scientists remain focused on finding ways to work with what we've got.

- I think we have set in motion a course of events and we will be continue to see impacts, right?

I think there is hope we can curtail the full extent of potential impacts, but we, you know, we we're not gonna be able to undo some of the damages already done with all of the carbon in the atmosphere.

- A lot of what needs to be done is global in scope, but people can act locally and they can make decisions in their everyday life to emit less carbon.

The main thing that we need to do is stop burning fossil fuels.

We can plan for the future.

We can plan greener cities.

We can store water more effectively within the landscape so we can deal with drought.

A lot of what we need to do is just take some responsibility for our actions and start adapting and also reduce emissions.

Research is not about just simply looking something in up in a book and saying, "Oh, we know the answer to that.

It's saying, we don't know the answer to something."

Some people kind of walk away from those challenges, they're like, this is too hard.

But we can't do that.

We can't just give up and say, "This is too hard.

No one will ever do this."

'Cause we try and bring together people with different areas of expertise, different bodies of knowledge that they have, and different interests, and try and make the world a better place.

- [Narrator] For more across Indiana stories, go to wfyi.org/acrossindiana.