Part One: TV6 Investigates impact of climate change on Upper Michigan, Lake Superior - WLUC

Climate change is defined by scientists, both locally and globally, as a change in global or regional climate patterns, causing environmental impact.

Part One: TV6 Investigates impact of climate change on Upper Michigan, Lake Superior

MARQUETTE, Mich. (WLUC) - Climate change is defined by scientists, both locally and globally, as a change in global or regional climate patterns, causing environmental impact.

To many climate researchers, whether that be among the National Weather Service, Michigan State University Extension or organizations like the Superior Watershed Partnership, the Upper Peninsula has become what they call a “climate haven.”

That can be defined as a place that avoids the worst effects of natural disasters and the potential of having the right infrastructure to support more people coming here to enjoy it.

From the small inland bodies of water like Teal Lake in Negaunee or the larger water sources like Lake Superior, to the blue-spotted salamanders’ migration on Presque Isle every year, scientists, meteorologists and farmers all say climate plays a significant role in everything in the U.P. However, climate change is also there.

“The fact of the matter is our climate has always been changing,” says Matt Zika, National Weather Service meteorologist. “We can go back millions of years ago. We can go back 10,000 years ago and we were buried by ice where we are sitting right now.”

Sunshine and ice, fresh water and forests, everything in this region is connected to Michigan’s largest Great Lake.

For researchers like Zika, it’s all a part of what makes the U.P. a laboratory for studying the climate.

“We have enough data there over that long period of time to say there is something going on here,” Zika says. “If it was just one or two or three years, that’s one thing, but once we start to get a conglomerate of 15, 20 years of data and it’s showing that sign, it is a clear indication that something is going on here locally.”

Zika says while meteorologists are constantly studying the U.P.’s day-to-day weather, the key to noticing signs of trouble on the horizon is defining the impact of climate change locally and how it reaches areas beyond our Upper Peninsula.

Locally, Zika says one of the most apparent signs is longer, warmer summers and shorter, colder springs.

“Just over the last 20 years, alone, where we are seeing the biggest climate shift is our summers tend to hang on longer now into the early fall, into September and October and our winters are hanging on a little bit longer into the spring now,” Zika says. “19 out of the last 20 Septembers, our temperatures have averaged above normal. I think 10 out of the last 20 Octobers, our temperatures have been above normal.”

Zika says 15 out of the last 20 Aprils and Mays have been recorded below normal temperature.

“If we look at our warmest years here across the U.P., nine of our warmest years have occurred since 2000,” Zika says. “On the flipside, only two of our top 12 coldest years have occurred since 2000.”

At the Superior Watershed Partnership on Presque Isle in Marquette, Program Manager Tyler Penrod agrees with Zika. He says the evidence is in the water.

“For decades, scientists have been monitoring the temperature of Lake Superior and it is well-documented,” Penrod says. “The lake, it’s temperature is increasing faster than almost any lake in the world.”

A recent study done by the Great Lakes Fish and Wildlife Commission shows the evidence there, while we might not notice it from our place on the shoreline.

In Lake Superior, summer surface waters increased about 1.4 degrees from 1985 to 2009. Zika, too, says over the last 30 years, trends show overall ice coverage on Lake Superior is decreasing.

According to meteorologists at the University of Minnesota-Duluth, the lake, on average, is 23% covered by ice in February. Come February 2023, Lake Superior only recorded 8% coverage. Compare that to a year before, February 2022, about 19.5% and in February 2021, 12% coverage.

Both Zika and Penrod say signs of this change are present in recent events we’ve felt the consequences of, as warmer lake water drove in larger, rain-producing storms.

“We’ve had some other very excessive, intense rainfall events that have occurred in the summer, too; 2012 north of Ironwood, last May here, even, in Marquette County,” Zika says. “While it didn’t occur right over the populated area, you go up north to County Road 510 and 550, we had four to six inches of rain that fell in about two and a half hours.”

The Great Lakes region, alone, Zika says, has recorded a nearly 10% increase in rainfall since the 1990s. Penrod says as of June, Negaunee Township, just west of Marquette, had already received 23.6 of the 35 average inches of precipitation for the year.

According to the National Weather Service, that marks the highest total amount of precipitation in the area since 1961. The normal amount is 16.25 inches from January to now.

Zika also attributes our more erratic fluctuations in snow to these changes, from a blizzard on the first day of spring, to a snowless U.P. 200.

“I mean, look at how this May started this year for us,” Zika says.

“You could totally look at the UP 200 as an example, although it is just one year,” Penrod says. “It is kind of a blip on the radar. It is something that you might expect to see more of, going forward, those popular events that might be disrupted by climate change.”

Zika says we will continue to see more impacts.

“There’ll be no doubt at some point in the future that we will see another flood like what occurred in the Houghton-Hancock area,” Zika says. “Just because you go through one year that’s colder or warmer, or we have one phenomenal, blockbuster early May snowstorm, that’s not the new norm.”

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