Wisconsin’s winters are getting warmer, and it’s affecting our agriculture, economy, health and very way of life. On the heels of what’s on track to be Wisconsin's warmest winter ever, WUWM is digging into the story in a new project, called Thin Ice: Wisconsin’s Warming Winters.
Airing Thursday, March 7 through Friday, March 15, listen for stories during Morning Edition and All Things Considered, as well as interviews during Lake Effect, from environmental reporter Susan Bence, and reporters Lina Tran and Chuck Quirmbach.
Why now?
We’ve just had a very mild winter, marked by warm temperatures, little snowfall and record low ice cover across the Great Lakes. The National Weather Service already confirmed it’s Milwaukee’s warmest winter on record, and the same is expected to be true statewide.
Winter is Wisconsin’s fastest-warming season, with especially warm winters occurring regularly since the late 1990s. In fact, our state has among the fastest-warming winters nationwide, according to an analysis by the research group Climate Central.
"Every winter now, I would bet, is going to be warmer than normal," says Wisconsin state climatologist Steve Vavrus. "I'm afraid that's the direction we're headed because we're no longer in a stationary climate anymore."
This year’s record-breaking winter was shaped by the one-two punch of climate change and a strong El Niño in the Pacific Ocean, which tends to bring milder winters in the Midwest. Vavrus notes that the climate pattern alone isn’t responsible for our lost winter; Wisconsin has seen plenty of warm winters in the past that had nothing to do with El Niño. Instead, El Niño amplified the winter warming that the state is seeing.
“This winter is an exclamation point on a long-term trend,” Vavrus says.
What is El Niño?
El Niño is a natural, global climate pattern. It develops when the surface of the Pacific Ocean is warmer than usual, for an extended time. That changes how the atmosphere circulates, which, in turn, affects weather across the country, particularly in the winter and early spring.
El Niño influences the flow of rivers of air, high in the sky, known as jet streams. During El Niño winters, the Pacific jet stream is strong and settles over the southern US. The polar jet stream — with all its cold, Arctic air — lingers in the north. Wisconsin is in the middle, so we tend to experience warm and dry El Niño winters.
Didn’t Wisconsin just see record snowfall last year?
Yes. Climate change doesn't mean that we won't ever get ice, snow or cold snaps. But increasingly, milder winters like this past one will be the norm, rather than the exception.
That dramatic variability makes it difficult for the industries and people affected by weather to stay on top of things. Karl Martin, co-owner of Martin & Sons Maple Syrup in Rhinelander, says the unusually warm weather meant his trees were ready for tapping in January, much earlier than years past.
“In my 50 years of making maple syrup, we have never seen sap flow in January in the northern part of the state,” he says. “Usually you would have a lot of snow on the ground, deep frost or both. This year, we had neither.”
Martin estimates they missed 20% of their production this year because they weren’t ready to start tapping in January. Going forward, they’ll have to be ready for the season’s start in a much wider window than they have before. It’s one example of how keeping up with climate change means staying nimble.
What we learned
People are working on solutions and ways to adapt to the challenges that climate change brings.
Take agricultural adaptations, for instance: There’s lots of buzz around perennial, diverse crops like Kernza, a source of both grain and forage.
Valentin Picasso planted the first Kernza field in Wisconsin when he joined UW-Madison agronomy department in 2015. Since then, Picasso and his students have worked with more than 20 Wisconsin farmers to learn how to achieve higher yields and to demonstrate the environmental benefits of Kernza’s deep and dense root systems.
Also, what happens in winter doesn’t stay in winter. The seasons are connected, and we see the consequences of warming winters throughout the year.
Finally, experts tell us that a winter like this should get our attention and make us think about what kind of future we want. Some climate change is locked in, so adaptations are necessary. But turning some of these trends around means overhauling how much we as a society rely on fossil fuels.
