I WILL NEVER forget my last day as a resident of Wisconsin. It was the beginning of May. There were snow flurries. I took my final college exam and immediately fled to my new home, Kansas City. It was in the ’70s.
The periodic blizzards and ice storms of Kansas City were nothing like the Milwaukee deep freezes where you drove for weeks on snow ruts on side streets. The summers were very different as well. Milwaukee during the 1960s and ’70s had a handful of days in the 90s. Kansas City broiled from June to early September.
This made me particularly interested in the latest global-warming news. University of Wisconsin researchers predict Wisconsin could have Missouri’s climate by 2055. This is the Midwestern parallel to Boston becoming the new Richmond, Va., or even Atlanta by 2090.
A changed Wisconsin and New England could share many of the same losses. Fall foliage would go from the blazing red and orange of maples to a less chromatic golden and bronze. Signature northern birds, like the loon, might flee permanently to Canada.
In Wisconsin, the greatest predicted effects would be in the north woods, where winters could be up to 11 degrees warmer on average. Summers would see 90-degree days triple in the north and double in the southern part of the state. For anglers, that may mean casting for different fish since species like brook trout live in cold water.
Midwestern climate change is really bad news for Cheeseheads who root for the Green Bay Packers. The Packers will lose their legendary psychological advantage. Visiting teams will no longer shiver in December on the “frozen tundra’’ of Lambeau Field. The tundra will become just another prairie. Similarly, what would New England Patriots playoff lore be like without snow angels by players or fans throwing snow into the air to sparkle as icy fireworks?
The study’s lead researchers, Dan Vimont and Chris Kucharik, told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel that they used the same models as the Nobel Prize-winning United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The results are consistent with results of the global panel. The data will be analyzed by other university and state natural resources researchers for actual policy prescriptions, but the authors did say, “The changes we’re experiencing today are driven by carbon emissions prior to the 1970s. We haven’t begun to feel the impact of more recent emissions. So we need to think about the changes we’re likely to see and find ways to manage the impacts.’’
The problem for Wisconsinites is the same as for New Englanders. We welcome warm weather when we can get it and find it difficult to greet the cold with open arms. Zero in January in the northern United States will never be as romantic as the 60-degree days that pepper the winters of Virginia and Georgia. But the question has to be asked, if Boston and Milwaukee are going to respectively become the next Atlanta or Kansas City, what will Atlanta and Kansas City become, hot as they already are in the summer?
The Wisconsin study was released the same week the National Climate Data Center said this summer’s global ocean surface temperatures were the warmest on record. Just in case you were wondering, the data center noted the unusually cool summer and cloudiness in the northern United States and central Canada.
But that did not stop the overall march of global warming, combined with an El Nino warming of the tropical Pacific Ocean. Deke Arndt, chief climate monitor at the data center, told USA Today, “The warmth in Australia and South America was striking. Land areas in the southern hemisphere broke their previous record by a large amount.’’
With records being broken from the southern hemisphere to the northern United States, the planet is screaming for a break from greenhouse gases. If the fate of the earth is not enough, Wisconsinites and New Englanders should certainly be alarmed for their football teams. The biggest defeat for the Packers and the Patriots may not be dealt by the Chicago Bears or the New York Jets. The new archrival is global warming.
Derrick Z. Jackson can be reached at jackson@globe.com. 
