Tag: climate change in Michigan

Lake Michigan temps are breaking records

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On a sunny, mid-September afternoon, Olu Demuren took a running start off the concrete ledge just south of Belmont Harbor and lept into Lake Michigan for the first time.

“I was preparing myself for cold water,” Demuren said. “And this immediately felt very nice.”

The water along Chicago’s lakeshore averaged an unseasonable 71 degrees that day. The weather was picturesque too: clear blue skies and temperatures in the mid-80s. Anneliese Rittberg watched their friends from the concrete ledge and said the weather felt “deeply abnormal.”

“While it’s fun to be out here, it’s also unsettling,” Rittberg said.

Lake Michigan’s surface temperature nearly every day this year has surpassed the running average dating back to 1995, according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) data. And it’s not just one Great Lake. All five are heating up. The massive bodies of water, which provide drinking water to more than 30 million people, are among the fastest-warming lakes worldwide, according to the federal government’s Fifth National Climate Assessment.

It’s a trend that doesn’t show any sign of slowing. As heat trapping-greenhouse gasses continue to accumulate in the atmosphere, the Great Lakes region is projected to grow warmer and wetter in the years and decades to come. Over a fifth of the world’s supply of non-frozen freshwater flows through the five connected Great Lakes, forming the Earth’s largest freshwater ecosystem.

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Lake Michigan started the year at around 42 degrees. That’s the hottest temperature on the first of the year since scientists started keeping track in 1995.

“On average, right now and for the past few years, we’ve been above the norm and above the trend for this satellite data record we have for temperature,” said Andrea Vanderwoude, a satellite oceanographer at NOAA’s Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory (GLERL).

She adds that several of the warmest years on record have occurred in the past decade. This summer was warm on the whole, but by itself did not set records. Winter temperatures, however, did.

“Winters are in fact, getting warmer and warmer, both in the lakes and in the air and the land around us,” said Drew Gronewold, a professor of environmental sciences at the University of Michigan. “Winter is vanishing from the Great Lakes.”

Average winter temperatures in the upper Midwest are several degrees warmer today compared to 50 years ago. This is important because how heat accumulates in the lakes in one season largely determines what happens the following season.

As a result, lakes that have consistently experienced seasonal ice cover since the last glacial stage are today seeing less and less of it. According to an analysis by GLERL, ice cover fell by approximately 5% per decade between 1973 and 2023. Today, there’s around 25% less ice cover than there was 50 years ago. This year has been the fourth lowest year for ice cover across the Great Lakes on record.

“This past ice year was one of the lowest ever,” said Gronewold. “Much of that time period was at record lows, and that is really a sort of the shade of things to come.”

Still, despite the warming trends, scientists said ice won’t be completely disappearing from the Great Lakes any time soon.

As Rose Sawyer dried off from her dip in the lake, she said that as far as she remembers, Lake Michigan has always varied.

“It’s weird to be swimming here this late, but it’s also just like the lake is kind of a constantly changing thing,” Sawyer said. “It’s not like a static object.”

While it’s true that Lake Michigan, like all the Great Lakes, have always shown variability from year to year, the overall trends conform with a global shift toward a warmer planet. That won’t just mean longer beach seasons on Chicago’s lakefront. It’ll mean a longer commercial shipping season, changing migratory patterns for fish and more intense storms. Here on Chicago’s lakefront, it will mean even more erosion and smaller beaches.

In the meantime, Demuren and their friends say that even if they are all out of 85 degree Chicago beach days, they’ll probably keep jumping into the lake anyway — until, eventually it becomes intolerably cold.

This story was originally published on September 27, 2024.

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Juanpablo Ramirez-Franco, WBEZ

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September 27, 2024
Michigan leads nation in toxic methane emissions from landfills

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The Environmental Protection Agency is investigating underreported methane emissions from landfills nationwide, and a recent report names Michigan as a major offender.

Methane is a potent greenhouse gas and a key focus in combating climate change. Experts warn methane emissions are spiraling out of control as they leak from landfills.

The advocacy group Industrious Labs reports Michigan landfills emit enough methane to equal 11 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, resulting in more waste per capita than any other state.

Kathrine Blauvelt, circular economy campaign director for Industrious Labs, highlighted the issue.

“Your landfills take in a lot of waste from out of state,” Blauvelt pointed out. “You also have one of the lowest recycling rates in the nation. So, that brings Michigan to the place of being sixth in the whole country in the highest landfill methane emissions.”

Blauvelt noted the good news is, the EPA and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer hold the pen to introduce tougher requirements for methane emissions standards, particularly with the clean energy legislation signed into law last year in Michigan.

Blauvelt said the EPA looked at dozens of inspection reports, which revealed a large amount of unchecked methane emissions at landfills in Michigan. She warned the situation is likely to be even worse than the numbers currently indicate, due to the emergence of what she calls “methane super-emitter events.”

“That’s your really, really large — you can see it from space, you can see it from air — emissions of methane,” Blauvelt explained. “Those are now being detected across the globe by technology.”

Blauvelt also mentioned the EPA only requires landfills to conduct methane leak inspections four times a year, using what she described as inadequate methods.

“They have a human being do it, walking across, you can imagine, many, many miles,” Blauvelt observed. “It could hot, right? That can be dangerous for the person to walk a landfill. So, it’s not surprising that landfills are missing these big methane leaks.”

She argued employing drones, satellites, and other technology would help to safely and more accurately locate methane leaks.

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Chrystal Blair, Michigan News Connection

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July 31, 2024
Michigan tribe celebrates funding to combat climate change

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It has been less than four months since Michigan’s Gun Lake Tribe received grants totaling $4 million for its plans to fight climate change.

Its electric infrastructure implementation project ramped up this spring.

Phyllis Davis, a tribal council member, said they are looking at ways to could increase efficiency and reduce negative environmental impacts on their area.

“Those dollars were used to replace existing vehicles, for the government campus and our gaming venue, with electric vehicles and charging systems that we will have installed throughout the footprint of our tribal campus,” Davis outlined.

This month, the Gun Lake Tribe had a visit from U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, who touted their successes so far and announced an additional $120 million in grant funding to help tribal communities around the country prepare for climate-related threats.

The money is part of a larger $560 million investment in tribal climate resilience programs. The focus is on making sure historically underfunded communities, and those seeing more pollution and environmental hazards, have a chance to improve their situations.

Davis pointed out the selection process for the funding was very competitive and shared why she believes the Gun Lake Tribe stood out among the other applicants.

“We do such a good job in grants and management, that every project that we’ve been awarded by the federal government, we have spent our dollars wisely,” Davis explained. “We have fulfilled every objective. We’ve been highly successful.”

Through federal initiatives, tribes can apply for grants for climate-related priorities, from planning and drought mitigation to wildfire prevention and coastal management.

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Chrystal Blair, Michigan News Connection

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July 29, 2024
Michigan program raises monarch butterflies

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Izzy Ross/IPR News

Emily Umbarger holds a tagged monarch in the Interlochen greenhouse in August 2023.

This coverage is made possible through a partnership between IPR and Grist, a nonprofit environmental media organization.

Magnolia Montgomery, age 12, peered into a rectangular enclosure covered with white mesh. Inside are milkweed branches. Caterpillars are slowly crawling on the leaves, some the size of a grain of rice.

“They’re very, very small. And they’re white with black and yellow stripes on them,” she said, examining the caterpillars. “They have two antennas in the front. And kind of two in the back somehow.”

The mesh enclosure is in the greenhouse at Interlochen Center for the Arts, part of the R.B. Annis Botanical Lab and Community Garden. Magnolia was a little hesitant as she searched for the small specks among the leaves, but she was blunt about what she knew.

“I don’t remember many scientific terms for the little baby caterpillars and stuff like that,” she said. But she did remember that the butterflies spend the winter in Mexico, and that males have spots on their wings but the females don’t.

The school’s sustainability department is raising around 50 to 60 monarch butterfly caterpillars — ordered through the University of Kansas as part of an effort to teach summer campers about the insects. For Emily Umbarger, the director of sustainability, this is an important part of raising awareness about the threats monarchs face.

Parasites, climate change, development, and pesticide use are among the forces disrupting insect populations around the world.

“In the 1990s when I was a 10 year old, there were monarchs everywhere,” Umbarger said. “Fast forward to today, you know, 34 years later, and the eastern population has decreased by 80 percent and the western population has decreased by more than 95 percent.” (Organizations like the Center for Biological Diversity and the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation have pointed to such declines.)

“Monarchs are so driven by temperature, by hours of light in the day, by where their food and their habitat is,” Umbarger said. “If that is not happening where it’s traditionally been happening, that causes a challenge.”

But researchers disagree on exactly what’s happening to monarchs. Some say certain populations are actually doing fine, while others are sounding alarms about declines.

Earlier this year, Yale Environment 360 reported on that tension, pointing to recent studies that cast doubt on conventional knowledge about the monarch population’s trajectory. One, in Current Biology, found that the total population of eastern monarchs has not drastically declined. Those researchers say that while the winter colonies in Mexico have shrunk, more butterflies are spending their winters in places like Florida. So the migration may be changing, but the overall population may not be dropping.

There’s also disagreement on the impacts of rearing programs; some scientists have cautioned against them, saying they can spread disease and disrupt migratory patterns.

In a statement published by the Xerces Society, experts warned that mass rearing can contribute to parasite spread and a host of other issues. The society has also argued that it’s better to help keep monarchs wild and improve their habitat, rather than artificially increase populations.

“All rearing of monarchs should be undertaken with extreme care, restricted to a single generation annually if the butterflies will be released, and carried out using safe rearing practices and vigilant monitoring for health and disease,” they write.

Still, the Xerces Society acknowledges there is a place for small scale rearing in education and citizen science.

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Izzy Ross/IPR News

Fallon Gandulla-Ghekiere and Magnolia Montgomery look into small dishes containing caterpillars feeding on “milkweed mush” in the Interlochen greenhouse on July 10, 2024.

The program at Interlochen is considered small scale, according to Umbarger. And for her, their focus on monarchs is warranted. Education through the rearing program is just one part of that.

The department got a grant several years ago to plant milkweed, which is a key part of the monarch’s habitat. Females lay eggs on the plant. Once they hatch, the caterpillars live and feed on the leaves.

In Michigan, lawmakers passed legislation banning noxious weeds but protecting milkweed from that designation.

Many butterfly enthusiasts plant it to try to help, but non-native milkweed can help parasites spread.

It’s important for people to understand the importance of native milkweed for monarch conservation, Umbarger said, “and stop spraying chemicals in our yard, especially around these kind of special native plants that provide the ecosystem and the habitat that these caterpillars need.”

The Interlochen greenhouse has also been tagging monarchs for years — capturing butterflies and placing a sticker on their hind wings as part of the University of Kansas’s Monarch Watch, a national community science program.

It’s just one way to try to make sense of what’s happening to monarchs.

But this morning, the students aren’t talking about studies or scientific doubts or the impact of climate on migratory patterns. Magnolia and her fellow camper Fallon Gandulla-Ghekiere are focused on the basics.

When asked what they most remember learning about the monarchs, they reply in excited unison: “They liquefy!”

That’s true. Once inside its chrysalis, parts of the caterpillar dissolve, and rearrange themselves to create new body parts, like wings — what Umbarger calls “genetic recombining.”

“Oh, and I also remember they eat their egg,” Fallon said, and Magnolia agreed: “Oh yeah, when they’re born their first meal is their own egg.”

Right now, the goal is to get them interested, so that hopefully they’ll want to continue to learn.

“It’s neat what different animals and creatures can do and it’s neat how we don’t even know how to do those things,” Fallon said. “It’s their own magic.”

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Izzy Ross, Interlochen Public Radio

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July 17, 2024
Michigan AG to sue fossil fuel companies over climate damage

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This coverage is made possible through a partnership between IPR and Grist, a nonprofit environmental media organization.

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel plans to sue fossil fuel companies for knowingly causing climate change, harming the state’s economy and ways of life.

The department is asking outside lawyers to submit proposals to help with the case, which Nessel said could potentially bring billions to the state to help address damages from climate change. Attorneys and law firms can submit proposals through June 5th.

“A case like this is exhaustive in nature,” she told Interlochen Public Radio. “You’re going after Big Oil, so you need to have some support in terms of additional attorneys and support staff.”

Nessel said the case is an effort to recover some of what Michigan has lost due to climate change, pointing to severe weather events, risks to agriculture, and last winter’s shorter ski seasons and canceled sled dog races.

“It’s long past time that we step up and hold the fossil fuel companies that are responsible for all these damages accountable,” she said.

Investigations in 2015 from Inside Climate News and the Los Angeles Times showed that companies like Exxon knew about the dangers of greenhouse gas emissions for decades, but minimized those threats.

Last month, the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability said its own nearly three-year-long investigation gave a “rare glimpse into the extensive efforts undertaken by fossil fuel companies to deceive the public and investors about their knowledge of the effects of their products on climate change and to undermine efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions.”

For instance, ahead of a recent congressional hearing, newly revealed documents showed that BP executives knew natural gas was contributing significantly to climate change but promoted it as a “bridge” fuel to replace coal.

Asked about Michigan’s plans to sue, Ryan Meyers, the American Petroleum Institute’s senior vice president and general counsel, said it is part of an “ongoing, coordinated campaign to wage meritless, politicized lawsuits against a foundational American industry and its workers.” Meyers added that climate policy should be handled in Congress, not the courts.

With this suit, Michigan would join dozens of local, tribal, and state governments that have taken similar steps to try to hold the industry accountable.

The attorney general’s department is working with state agencies to assess the impacts of climate change in Michigan.

Nessel said the state has successfully pursued similar legal efforts in the past, including against the opioid industry and chemical manufacturers that produced PFAS.

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Izzy Ross, Interlochen Public Radio

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May 10, 2024
Dwindling Great Lakes ice cover highlights troubling trend

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Ices and ducks floated in Lake Michigan near Grand Haven.

The Great Lakes region has experienced record low ice cover this winter, and scientists said it is important to keep an eye on the warming trends.

Ice cover on the Great Lakes is currently at just 2.9% of the surface area, compared with the historical average of 38% for this time of year.

Ayumi Fujisaki-Manome, associate research scientist at the University of Michigan, said the main reasons for less ice are the current El Niño weather pattern and the warm phase of the North Atlantic Oscillation, both of which are preventing cold air from reaching the Great Lakes region.

She acknowledged winter recreation is certainly affected but emphasized there is a greater effect.

“People have to be more careful with such hazardous conditions,” Fujisaki-Manome pointed out. “Even if we are getting warmer and having less ice, we’re still subject to dangerous weather conditions such as lake-effect snowstorm or freezing rain, which is more dangerous.”

Fujisaki-Manome noted year-to-year variations are occurring on top of the longer-term warming trend and can lead to extreme weather patterns.

Melissa Widhalm, associate director of the Midwestern Regional Climate Center at Purdue University, said all the changes are tied to an overall warming climate and warmer water temperatures. She stressed the importance of considering the long-term implications.

“There’s some positives. If you have less ice, maybe that’s great for shipping, but there are certainly some negatives,” Widhalm contended. “You have winners and losers. It can be really damaging to fish species that lay their eggs and expect that ice to be there to protect their eggs during those winter storms.”

In Detroit, an already dwindling season of black lake sturgeon fishing was canceled altogether because of safety concerns over low ice cover.

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Farah Siddiqi, Michigan News Connection

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February 19, 2024
Warm winters a wet blanket for small ski slopes in northern Michigan

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Mt. Holiday’s executive director, Jim Pearson, talks about this winter’s conditions. Feb. 8, 2024.

This coverage is made possible through a partnership with IPR and Grist, a nonprofit independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future.

It’s around 8 a.m. on an early February morning at Mt. Holiday, a small ski area in Traverse City.

The rustic lodge overlooking the slopes is quiet. Executive director Jim Pearson warns me to not be startled if I see a chipmunk running around.

“I’ve been trying to chase him out all morning since I got here,” he said. “He’s an elusive little guy.”

Outside, snow is still clinging to some of the hills, surrounded by streaks of brown earth. On this day, it’s supposed to reach around 50 degrees.

“It used to be we would use the snow guns to add to what Mother Nature gave us,” Pearson said. “And now it’s like the complete opposite, where we have to rely more on the man-made snow. So obviously, that’s a lot of ground to cover. It’s been very challenging.”

In a place where businesses depend on snow and cold temperatures, this weather has been tough. Iconic sled dog races like the UP200 and the Tahquamenon Country Sled Dog Race have been canceled, and the state shut down ice fishing for sturgeon on Black Lake.

Warmer winters have prevented Mt. Holiday from fully operating over Christmas break for five out of the last six years due to poor snow conditions, according to Pearson. It used to be a big moneymaker.

This year, Traverse City saw a Christmas Day high of 58 degrees, tying it with the record high set in 1982. The western part of the Upper Peninsula saw its warmest December since the National Weather Service started keeping records over a century ago.

Pearson said they’ve discussed shutting down for the season, but he hasn’t given up yet.

“One of the challenges is we tried to preserve what snow we had,” he said. “So in some cases, that’s easier to do than others.”

He walks down the stairs of the lodge and out to the deck overlooking the chairlifts.

“This is usually what we would see in late April,” he said, pointing to uneven snow cover on the hills. Even with bad conditions for skiing, Mt. Holiday can turn to tubing, which requires less snow.

Pearson hopes colder weather will come to let the snow guns do their work. They use hundreds of gallons of water per minute when they’re all firing. When it’s cold enough, crews operate them in shifts, sometimes 24 hours a day, trying to keep snow on the ground.

Some of the region’s larger ski resorts further north have the advantage of cooler temperatures, Pearson said, and with better equipment they can keep their guns going and stay open through the warm spells. Mt. Holiday doesn’t have that luxury.

“We put a pause on the skiing of that hill trying to preserve it until — well, we hoped cold temperatures were going to come this week,” he said. That forecast was pushed back to the following week.

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Izzy Ross/IPR News

Mt. Holiday’s hills covered with patchy snow the morning of Feb. 8, 2024.

The future of winter

“Winters in northern Michigan and in the Upper Midwest in general are warming and becoming shorter due to climate change,” said Lauren Casey, a meteorologist with the nonprofit Climate Central.

To understand the difference between weather and climate, Casey said, we can think of weather as news, and climate as history.

Attribution science helps determine the role of climate change in making weather events more frequent and intense — including temperatures.

“I was a broadcast meteorologist before moving to Climate Central two years ago, and that would be kind of the narrative, like, you can’t tie one specific event to climate change,” she said. “That has all changed with the evolution of attribution science. And it continues to get more advanced every day. So now we can correlate certain events and the impact that climate change has had on it.”

Climate Central has a “Climate Shift Index,” which shows how much climate change influences temperatures on a given day.

In Traverse City, on the day we talked to Jim Pearson at Mt. Holiday, the index showed that climate change has made those warmer temperatures three times more likely. As the index says, “this would be very difficult to encounter in a world without climate change — not necessarily impossible, just highly unlikely.”

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Izzy Ross/IPR News

Ski rentals at Mt. Holiday have been quiet this year, as warm weather has made conditions less than ideal. Feb. 8, 2024.

Big bucks for Michigan

Winter recreation brings in billions of dollars to Michigan’s economy each year. The state has the second-most ski areas in the country.

The Michigan Economic Development Corporation reported a spike in “snow activities” in recent years, adding $130 million to the GDP in 2022.

In 2020 the Great Lakes Business Network estimated that the economic impact of winter activities was around $3 billion annually.

“So it is unfortunate for a lot of those businesses that do rely on the winter season, and those activities. And obviously, that takes a big hit,” said Leah Robinson, with the Michigan Chamber of Commerce. “But our businesses are very resilient, and have learned over the years that relying on one specific season or activity is not necessarily the best way to go about things.”

As some businesses grapple with what to do, the state is trying to shore up the damage from the warm weather. In 2021, the Still Pure Michigan ad campaign announced that it would spend $3 million on ads for that winter.

A recent Department of Natural Resources email urged readers to “make some no-snow outdoor plans today.”

The department offered ideas for other activities — shore fishing, stargazing, birding, and a cold-water plunge in the East Grand Traverse Bay, followed by a sauna.

Back at Mt. Holiday, Pearson said the team is continuing to shift its focus.

“Ropes courses, frisbee golf, maybe using the chairlift in the summertime to bring people up and down, fall color tours,” he said. “Anything that we can add that brings people out here to enjoy.”

All that, he said, is part of leaning on the other seasons instead of just hoping for good winters ahead.

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Izzy Ross, Interlochen Public Radio

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February 16, 2024