Minnesota's soaring temps: What's the climate change connection?

EMILY BRIGHT: And our top story is the weather today. We have a trifecta this week-- overnight storms that caused damage, air quality alert, and a major heat wave that will be swallowing up the state this week. So, of course, we need details. And for those we turn to Chief Meteorologist Paul Huttner. Paul, thanks for joining me again.

PAUL HUTTNER: Oh, always good to be here, Emily. And, finally, we got some rain.

EMILY BRIGHT: Oh, my goodness. I have to say, rain woke me up in the dark hours of the night. And once I assured that, yes, my windows were closed, I was just so grateful we were getting some rain. Although if you were in line of those strong storms, you woke up to a different story. Give us the view.

PAUL HUTTNER: Yeah. This was a classic bow echo, a textbook bow echo as we call it in the weather business-- a big mesoscale convective system, these large clumps of thunderstorms. And they get going nocturnally this time of year. Late July and August, they're common to develop at night. And we saw that last night. The radar was glowing with these storms in Western Minnesota.

They're typical to produce these damaging wind signatures that we saw in West Central Minnesota. You hit a few of the towns-- I saw gusts of 60 in Morris and Broughton, 75-mile-an-hour wind gust recorded in Belgrade at 11:07 last night. Morris and Chicago, power outage there. Twin Cities-- these storms, thankfully as far as wind, backed off a little as they moved in. I saw a gust of 51 in Brooklyn Center, 56 in Saint Paul, so not quite damaging, which is good news.

And also good news, oh, the rain. Check this out. Glenwood in Western Minnesota had 4.4 inches of rain. That is a drought easing rain. It may not erase the drought, but it sure helps. Spicer, 3.7. Wilmer, 3.1 inches. Litchfield had almost 3 inches of rain, Hutchinson 2 and 1/2. You get closer to the Twin Cities-- Glencoe, 2.1. I saw 2 in Maple Grove at Woodbury.

Parts of Minneapolis, 1.8. Plymouth, 1.6. Waconia, as well. Here at the weather lab, about an inch in Victoria. And then Southern Minnesota, Zumbrota and Mankato, also around an inch. So this was widespread beneficial rainfall, Emily. We really, really, really needed it.

EMILY BRIGHT: Yes, we did. That absolutely has got to help. And so let's talk about the heat. Because it gets hot, that's going to maybe undo the rain or the-- I don't know. Tell me about the heat.

PAUL HUTTNER: Yeah. This looks like the hottest week of summer overall, and the next two days could be the hottest. We hit 95 back on July 3, 94 yesterday. I think we'll get to 95 again today, maybe 96, 97 in the Twin Cities. And heat index values will be up around 100 today and tomorrow. Tomorrow may be the hottest day of this heat wave, so that heat advisory in effect through 9:00 PM tomorrow from Western Minnesota, through Wilmer, Mankato, right into the Twin Cities, Emily.

And interesting that those dew points came up, too. You might have felt that 70 degree dew point last night, very humid with this, as well. And we may be getting some corn sweat with this. That's where the corn gives up some of its moisture into the lower atmosphere. I saw dew points of 76 last night in Southwest Minnesota.

EMILY BRIGHT: And I want to ask about this 100 degrees. I mean, how rare is it, say, in the Twin Cities, to hit 100 degrees or higher?

PAUL HUTTNER: Yeah, it's a little more rare than you might think. I was looking at some of the numbers. We hit it about every four to five years, historically, in the Twin Cities. The records go back to 1873. The last one was last summer, June 20. And then before that, 2018, and then before that, 2012. Interesting to note our hottest ever, Emily, 108, if you can believe that in the Twin Cities.

That was July 14, 1936, in the Dirty '30s. I remember my parents, Emily, who lived in South Minneapolis, telling me people were sleeping at the lakes, like Bde Maka Ska and Lake Harriet, just to get away from the heat. There was pre-air conditioning in those days, so that was a notable heat wave.

EMILY BRIGHT: I'll bet. So will we cool off this weekend?

PAUL HUTTNER: We will. A thermal ridge sets up over us tomorrow, the hottest day. A chance of thunderstorms Thursday night with a cool front will break this heat wave. Still around 90 Friday, but we're into the 80s this weekend. Saturday, a fresh breeze, 83. Sunday, a chance of a thunderstorm and 85. And next week looks like we're mostly in the 80s.

EMILY BRIGHT: OK. So let's talk about this air quality alert now.

PAUL HUTTNER: Yeah. And it's in effect until 9 o'clock tomorrow, this one for ozone. Interesting to note, the air quality is good across the Twin Cities and most of Minnesota now. The rain washed that air out. But as the day goes on, those pollutants can build up. Sunshine, heat, it's kind of a cocktail. So that's in effect through tomorrow. This, I believe, is our 27th air quality alert of the year. I'm losing count now. But that blows away the record of 21 set in 2021. So one more air quality alert to go here, at least.

EMILY BRIGHT: All right. Well, Paul, before I let you go, what's on Climate Cast?

PAUL HUTTNER: Yeah. We're talking about heat waves. And how can we attribute climate change to that part of the heat wave? Climate Central is an interesting organization out of Princeton, New Jersey. They have a tool, the Climate Shift Index, that can gauge how much of these heat waves are produced by climate change. And we're going to talk to Bernadette Woods Placky, who is their chief meteorologist there. That's tomorrow on Climate Cast, Thursday on All Things Considered.

EMILY BRIGHT: All right. Well, we'll listen for it Thank you, Paul.

PAUL HUTTNER: My pleasure. Thanks, Emily.

EMILY BRIGHT: That's MPR's Chief Meteorologist Paul Huttner. And so heat waves, climate change connections-- I'm looking forward to hearing that tomorrow. We're going to focus on that a little right now, too, for the next few minutes. Suzi Clark is on the line. She's a postdoctoral associate at the University of Minnesota, and she works on the Minnesota Climate Adaption Partnership. That's a boundary organization that connects climate research to non-academic audiences across the state of Minnesota. Hi, Suzi.

SUZI CLARK: Hi. Thanks for having me.

EMILY BRIGHT: Well, thanks for joining me. So, I mean, that headline really just kind of stopped me in my tracks yesterday, saying that scientists say the heat wave we're experiencing right now is directly related to climate change. So I wanted to ask how have scientists might have come to this conclusion.

SUZI CLARK: Yeah. So that headline that you're talking about, I took a look at it. And that's referring specifically to the heat waves happening in the southern part of the country, so the US-Mexico border area, as well as in Southern Europe, those headlines of 50 Celsius, which is in the hundred and teens Fahrenheit.

Here in Minnesota, we are definitely experiencing a heat wave. But I just talked with Kenny Blumenfeld from the state climatology office, and he says that actually, as Paul just mentioned, as well, these sorts of heat events in Minnesota can happen every few years. But we do project that they're going to get stronger, intenser, and more frequent with climate change.

And the study that you mentioned, they actually used climate models to try to parse apart the effect of human-induced climate change on these heat waves, to try to figure out could this heat wave have happened without climate change. And the result that they came to was that, especially in the Southern US region and Northern Mexico, it would have been virtually impossible without the effects of human-induced climate change.

EMILY BRIGHT: Wow. So looking at Minnesota, which we know sometimes-- especially this time of year-- it does get hot. But looking ahead, what effects might we see going forward with summer weather in Minnesota?

SUZI CLARK: Yeah. So we definitely project that heat waves, as I said, they will get hotter. And they're expected to become longer, as well, in the future with climate change. The degree to which that will happen kind of depends on which scenario you're looking at. And by scenario, I mean how much greenhouse gases we continue to emit globally, and also what time frame in the future you're looking at.

Mid-century is going to have a different projected change than the end of the century. But in the end of the century, in Minnesota, we project that in the Twin Cities we could see more than 45 days per year hotter than 90 degrees Fahrenheit in a high emissions scenario. And that's what we're currently on track for, unfortunately.

EMILY BRIGHT: Oh, my goodness. So what are the most important things to people in Minnesota can do to slow that, prevent that?

SUZI CLARK: So there are some individual actions you can take to help what we call mitigate climate change. And that is to help prevent climate change from happening. And I highly recommend-- actually, our director recently published a book called The Climate Action Handbook. And that's by Dr. Heidi Roop, and that should be starting to be available in libraries and whatnot. So that has a lot of individual actions you can take to help mitigate climate change.

But we also have to understand that we are facing this change regardless. It's already here, and so we need to start adapting to it, as well. And so there are some personal actions you can take to adapt. The Minnesota Department of Health has some really good information sheets in a variety of different languages. And they break it down to you should stay hydrated, stay cool, stay informed.

And one thing that we can all really do on a community level is check in on our neighbors. Because the people who are most vulnerable are either the very young or the very elderly, and particularly people who live by themselves. So something you can do today to make sure that maybe this heat wave isn't as bad as it could be in terms of affecting people is to check in on your elderly neighbor next door who might not have someone checking in on them otherwise.

EMILY BRIGHT: Yeah. Good reminder to always be looking out for each other, but especially when the weather is severe. I have to ask-- it's alarming when we hear things like it's only going to get worse. With poor air quality due to wildfire smoke and heat, it's very easy to feel overwhelmed or hopeless about climate change. And so I want to ask you, as someone who studies this and focuses on it, how do you cope with that anxiety?

SUZI CLARK: Oh, that's a good question. And I actually get this a lot about my work. Doesn't your work make you really stressed and anxious?

[LAUGHTER]

And, actually, my work is the thing that makes me feel optimistic. This is the part of my life where I feel like I'm doing something to help try to combat this problem. And I think the way that we can all not get caught up in this black cloud of despair is to think of all the ways in which we are working towards this problem, in which we're trying to address it, the number of people that are in the pool working on it together.

But also, a really encouraging statistic-- I know that it can feel like nobody cares about climate change or that there's only people denying it around you. Something like 70% of Americans are actually either alarmed, concerned, or cautious about climate change. And so I think one of the biggest things we can do about it individually is start talking about it. And make sure that the common discourse in our local communities and across the country is that, yes, this is a problem, and yes, we need to do something about it.

And the more we have voices at, let's say, the grass roots level talking about it, the more our politicians and corporations are going to start paying attention and listening that people want to do something about this. So I think step one is to start talking about it.

EMILY BRIGHT: And that's part of why we wanted to have you on the show today. Is there an area of your research that you're particularly excited about?

SUZI CLARK: Ooh, yes. Actually, we're working on some projections right now for the state of Minnesota. Climate models on a global scale don't have a very high what we call resolution. They only give you one number for an area that's 60 kilometers by 60-- sorry, 60 miles by 60 miles wide. And we want to get relevant information for local municipalities across the state of Minnesota. So we are doing projections for the whole state at a 3 mile resolution. And those will be publicly available online towards the end of the year.

And I'm pretty excited about that. I've enjoyed going and talking to state agents, and non-governmental organizations, private industry, tribal governments, you name it, telling them about this data and how it can be used to help them make decisions.

EMILY BRIGHT: The idea being if you have a better, clearer map, you can more easily envision the issues at hand and address them. Is that the idea?

SUZI CLARK: Yeah. The idea is that you can get data that might be at the scale that you need. So if we were to try to use a global climate projection, you wouldn't be able to see differences between Northern and Southern Minnesota, for example. And we do expect that those might have different changes with climate change. This is going to give information for people at a city scale to think how is climate change going to affect my city, and how can I plan for that.

EMILY BRIGHT: Oh, that sounds really useful. Well, Susie, thank you for your work, and thanks for your time today.

SUZI CLARK: Thank you for having me.

EMILY BRIGHT: That was Susie Clark with the University of Minnesota's Climate Adaptation Partnership.