Living with Climate Change

       While I don't think I have lived in Wisconsin long enough to give a fully adequate response to whether or not the weather patterns I've experienced are historically unusual or not, it seems that from everyone I have talked to who has lived here for an extensive period of time, there is some recognition that we are experiencing unprecedented weather events. In particular, the polar vortex seems to be the most widely discussed new phenomenon, and while my West Coast self isn't fully used to the winters here, I still do recognize a measurable difference between what is normally experienced, and the weather during a polar vortex. Something that has not been the case historically is that I can say I had no "snow" days during my education, but did have several "cold" days, in which school was canceled due to a dip in temperature/wind chill below -40C/-40F. This is a direct consequence of the increasing commonality with which the polar vortex affects Wisconsin communities, which as we learned is a result of temperature swings that prevents the establishment of strong polar winds keeping the cold air in place over the poles, allowing incredibly cold, dry air from the north to come down, often via the jet stream, to our communities and cause these dangerous chills. 

 

Data from the National Weather Service documenting the extreme cold seen in the polar vortex cold snap in the 2018-2019 winter season 

(Source: https://www.weather.gov/arx/jan3019)

       Back in my native California, I have much more familiarity with the effects of climate change, specifically the changes in the environment that are occurring as a consequence of the ongoing droughts. It was recognized early in my life by many of the adults and leaders in my community that our lawns and water-loving plants that we planted around them were wholly unsustainable, thus many of the people whom we knew in our hometown decided to make the change to succulents and rock gardens. Those who didn't had to face ever more strict limits to water usage on their lawns

       Something much more consequential than trading turf for pebbles, however, was that of the increased fires in the area. The year after we moved from Northern California, the county that I lived in experienced one of the worst fire events in the history of the state, the Tubbs fire, burning down many neighborhoods, several of these neighborhoods once housing people that we knew. These fires even got within 1 mile of the neighborhood I used to call home. As a result of such extensive loss of housing in the area, mobile homes were bought in droves and housing prices inflated further in the region. Much of the blame was placed on the lack of water in the area, a result of chronic, unsustainable overuse of the water resources and the historic drought, of an intensity and duration not seen for centuries prior (1). What also must be mentioned (and stopped should we want to inhabit these lands and prevent the most destructive fires) is the fire policy that had been in place for decades. This practice allowed for the accumulation of an incredibly dense and fuel-rich underlayer, particularly as a result of an ecological community that contained grasses and eucalyptus trees with fire adaptions that are meant to burn on a regular, cyclic basis (2). 

The aftermath of the Tubbs fire, a fire which ravaged much of Sonoma, Lake, and Napa Counties 

(Source: https://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/news/cal-fire-4658-homes-destroyed-in-tubbs-fire/)

      Perhaps the most important idea I can take away from this course is how climate change will still impact us in the Midwest, correcting my prior understanding that we won't be meaningfully impacted in the ways that other regions will. I naively thought before this course that while the West Coast may experience increased drought and wildfires, the South might experience worse hurricanes and flooding, the Northeast may experience increased hurricanes and perhaps a collapse of the gulf stream, and the prairies may experience worse desertification, that the upper Midwest with its temperate habitat may come out relatively unscathed. Obviously, this was wishful thinking, but exploring the critical effects that human-caused climate change has already had, such as the unnatural, sustained drop in water levels in our great lakes due to increased water/air interface in the cold, dry months, as well as the effects human-caused climate change will have in the future, such as the potential wholesale change of our native ecological communities beyond what has already been done, has been illuminating into how we do have skin in the game when it comes to maintaining a healthy climate. 

Citations: 

1. https://www.mercurynews.com/2022/02/14/current-drought-is-worst-in-1200-years-in-california-and-the-american-west-new-study-shows/ 

2. https://www.nps.gov/pore/learn/management/upload/firemanagement_fireeducation_newsletter_eucalyptus.pdf