Climate Talk Series Q&A: UGA's Marshall Shepherd highlights evidence of climate change
Climate Talk Series Q&A: UGA’s Marshall Shepherd highlights evidence of climate change
Climate Talk is a series in which experts in the field of climate science shed light on the numerous impacts of climate change, including its economic, agricultural, and infrastructure costs.
Dr. Marshall Shepherd is the director of the Department of Geography and Atmospheric Sciences Program at the University of Georgia. In an interview with The Augusta Chronicle and climate change reporter Erica Van Buren, Shepherd highlights evidence that climate change is happening now.
Erica Van Buren: Is climate change real?
Dr. Marshall Shepherd: I think we’ve moved beyond the need to write about or provide evidence of climate change. It’s changing. Period. Yes, climate changes naturally, but there’s a clear human “steroid” on top of it. Grass grows naturally, but it grows differently when the lawn is fertilized. Trees fall naturally in the forest, but that doesn’t make chainsaws a hoax. I’m trying to convey that the narrative isn’t “either/or,” it’s “and”.
Van Buren: How are weather patterns changing?
Shepherd: For years, studies show the signal of climate change is clearly in today’s weather extremes. The most conclusive evidence is in the heatwaves, intense rainstorms, and drought conditions. We’re experiencing extreme heat days, and a particularly worrisome trend is that the nighttime lows are becoming hotter. That’s when we start getting health outcomes. Over time, we’ll see more days over 95 degrees Fahrenheit, which causes problems for the state’s outdoor workforce in agriculture and construction.
Van Buren: Are increasingly severe weather events endangering infrastructure?
Shepherd: Basic physics, via the Clausius-Clapeyron relation, tells us that a warmer atmosphere holds more water vapor, and that’s leading to very intense, on average, rainstorms. The combination of more water falling over short periods of time, increasing impervious surfaces, and stormwater removal systems designed for the last century, increases the state’s vulnerability to flooding.
Van Buren: What influences the path that hurricanes take?
Shepherd: The path of a hurricane is influenced by weather patterns. In 2025, we had 13 named storms. Three of them were Category 5. Luckily for the U.S., most of them didn’t make landfall. But that wasn’t the case for places like Jamaica, Cuba, and Haiti. Hurricane Melissa was likely one of the strongest hurricanes to make landfall in the Atlantic Basin. And like many of them in recent years, it explosively intensified.
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Erica Van Buren is the climate change reporter for The Augusta Chronicle, part of the USA TODAY Network. Connect with her at EVanBuren@gannett.com or on X: @EricaVanBuren32.