Storms start to move out of Minnesota, continue for western Wisconsin

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In the Marshall Islands, a string of atolls in the South Pacific, the stakes from climate change are clear and immediate.

, parts of the island nation southwest of Hawaii disappear under 2 feet of water. Meanwhile, a persistent drought is damaging the food supply for a population of 68,000 people.


"The elders tell us that there have been droughts like this before, but I don't think anybody has ever seen it where it's so wet," Tony de Brum, minister for climate change, told Australia Network News, as reported by the Weather Channel.
The land rises only about 6 feet above sea level, leaving the Marshalls with little margin during severe weather.


Paul Huttner, chief meteorologist for MPR News, discussed the plight of the Marshall Islands and their possible future on Thursday's Daily Circuit Climate Cast.


"This is a place that's quite literally on the front lines of climate change," he said. "Could it be the next Atlantis?"
According to a report on 


Some of those tide changes are becoming a threat closer to home, as well, Huttner said —  and it's worth considering the impact of rising waters near U.S. cities like Miami, Tampa, New York, San Francisco and Washington, D.C. 


"One of the interesting things about the U.S. coast is the vulnerability of our airports," he said, many of which are built  close to the water. New York's LaGuardia airport was 

inundated with water during last fall's Hurricane Sandy


In Minnesota, the changes in climate can also force changes in nearby forestry, wildlife and natural structures. Lee Frelich, a forest ecologist at the University of Minnesota, joined Climate Cast to talk about the changes facing northern Minnesota and the Boundary Waters Canoe Area as the climate shifts.


It starts with tree limits, he said. A number of tree species' northern range tends toward central Minnesota  — but Frelich and his team have noticed that their edges have begun to push farther north. Red maple, for instance, is beginning to show up in the Boundary Waters. So is the red oak, which is far more typical in the Duluth area, about 100 miles to the southeast.
"We're getting thousands of occurrences per square mile of red maple throughout the Boundary Waters," he said.


It's become a cycle: The wind storms called 

, Frelich said, have appeared more frequently. They level the forest. The forests burn in drought seasons, and the fires have been more severe than in the past. Some of the pine species have become close to extinct. And when the forests regenerate, they become something you'd be more likely to see 100 miles south. And with the flora come the fauna.


"Deer are moving further north because the snow cover isn't as deep for as long; that's a limiting factor for deer," he said. And they bring parasites that damage the moose population. 


This isn't the first time a shift like this has happened in Minnesota. Just look to the white spruce, which stretched from Hudson Bay to Missouri and Tennessee.


"You know, 4,000 years ago," Frelich said, "the spruce was farther north, and we had grasses and oak trees in Minnesota."

Gallery

Just barely above sea level, the South Pacific islands face an increasingly uncertain future.

Climate change may drive Marshall Islands the way of Atlantis

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