Mark Seeley told a group of water quality and climate scientists from the United States and Canada Thursday that “the earth’s climate is evolving” during the ninth International Lake of the Woods Water Quality Forum at Rainy River Community College.
About 85 scientists and natural resource managers from the United States and Canada attended the two-day international event, which poses as the primary scientific conference for researchers and resource managers studying the water quality, fisheries and hydrology of the Lake of the Woods and Rainy River watershed.
As one of the keynote speakers, Seeley, a professor in the University of Minnesota Department of Soil, Water, and Climate, spoke about the impact of climate change and how the region is adapting to such changes.
“There are natural drivers of the earth’s climate system that have been in play for 4-1/2 billion years,” Seeley explained.
Seeley highlighted some of the natural drivers as the Earth’s relation to the sun, ocean currents, and volcanic eruptions.
He continued that two other drivers to the Earth’s climate system are land use — how the earth’s landscape is constantly changing — and the changing composition of the earth’s atmosphere.
“These three factors drive the behavior of the Earth’s climate system,” Seeley said. “Perceptions of climate behavior have evolved over generations.”
As the trend of climate and reading that climate changes, Seeley says, “We have some adaptation to contemplate because we’re starting to measure climate attributes that are outside the realm of what we have in our historical record.”
The climatologist gave examples — mostly referring to Minnesota — on how “climate change is real.”
“We’re in a pretty pronounced warming period,” he said.
In the climate community International Falls sits in, changes in climate perceptions include: warmer winters with higher minimum temperatures, the atmosphere is “more loaded with water vapor,” and changes in quantity and character of precipitation, according to Seeley.
With warmer seasons comes consequences, both positive and negative, he noted. He said biology is changing with more insects living through the winter, heating-degree days are reduced, and an extended fall season brings out longer outdoor construction opportunities as well as changes in public health.
“Patient loads with molds and allergies have gone up,” he said.
Seeley explained that measured attributes of the climate are changing with “statistical significance.” Earth’s temperature changes in the equatorial latitudes are minor and undetectable in some countries, he said. However, when considering the mid-to-high latitudes, the changes in temperature behavior are statistically significant.
“A lot of the equatorial latitudes are getting dryer and a lot of the mid-to-high latitudes are getting wetter, and that is kind of the region we’re in,” Seeley explained.
Seeley presented several diagrams and figures showing temperature changes through the seasons. Thirteen of the top 20 warmest Minnesota Januarys on record have been in the last three decades, he said while noting the trend in climate change to which he earlier referred.
When engaging the public with climate changes, Seeley outlined obstacles he joked “get in his way.”
“We’re not on the same page in terms of climate literacy,” he said. “Our government is making an effort to improve climate literacy. We’re doing a lot of things to put out a lot of climate literacy material.”
He also said popular culture does a number of “very terrible” things to climate science.
“They overly-simplify it, they trivialize it, and they polarize it for purposes of great entertainment, because it makes great entertainment,” Seeley said.
Seeley concluded with how climate changes are altering weather throughout the world including record-breaking rainfall in Canada and intense thunderstorms throughout the United States.
“For those who doubt or wish to dismiss evidence that the climate is changing, I argue...based on data, it is happening,” Seeley told the group. “If you’ve been waiting to see rabbits in the sky or pigs in the sky, now is the time.”
