Climate change’s possible local effect
Indiana doesn’t have any coral reefs. The state is not located near an ocean. Those native to the Region know the weather has always been unpredictable.
So, what is climate change doing to the Midwest specifically?
In Indiana, average temperatures have risen 1.2 degrees, and annual precipitation has increased by 5.6 inches, according to the Indiana Climate Change Impacts Assessment conducted by Purdue, whose data goes back as far a 1895.
“In recent years, we’ve had major floods in different parts of the state, and this year we’ve had a consistently wet spring,” said Jeffrey Dukes, the director of the Purdue Climate Change Research Center. “I can’t associate any of those things 100 percent with climate change, but the expectation we have is that it will continue to get wetter in winter and spring, and continue to get warmer, too.”
How the weather will change?
According to The Union of Concerned Scientists, the warming climate is making heat waves more intense, and more frequent. Heavier rainstorms are becoming more frequent, too, and coastal flooding is worse due to human emissions causing oceans to rise, according to the New York Times.
Extreme bouts of precipitation and flooding caused by climate change could become more normal in the Great Lakes region, according to a report done by scientists and experts from universities and institutions in the Great Lakes region.
It’s expected that this summer will get hotter and drier, said Emily Wood, the Executive Director of the Indiana Wildlife Federation.
“We’ll have more days that will be about 90 degrees in our summers, which will get longer and hotter,” Wood said.
This spring, the Midwest has had one of the rainiest seasons on record for the area, according to National Geographic. As a result, many farmers have had fields flood and have been forced to leave them empty, instead of planting crops.
“This year the spring has been unusually wet — the problem is that it’s been consistently wet,” Dukes said. “As springs get wetter, you expect the period when fields are dry to shrink.”
Even if the fields manage to dry out and there is a period in which farmers are able to plants their crops, the plants can still be at risk. Roots can be damaged by too much moisture, which means that if it continues to rain after the crop is planted and the soil becomes too wet, it may be difficult for the plant to continue growing.
According to the National Geographic, warming air can lead to more water. As the atmosphere warms, it’s capable of holding more moisture. Much of the rain experienced in the Midwestern states originated in the sky over the Gulf of Mexico, where waters have warmed.
“Over the next few decades, these changes that are happening, particularly because of climate, will accelerate,” Dukes said.
How plants in the area are affected
As the weather changes in the area, so does the plant life.
Katherine Moore Powell, a climate change ecologist at the Field Museum in Chicago, looks specifically at prairies and other infrastructures in the Midwest. She said prairies are one of the most imperiled ecosystems left in the area.
Powell said climate change has affected the way controlled fires in prairies are conducted. These fires are important because they help remove non-native plants while allowing prairie plants more room and nutrients to grow. Fires remove some of the woody vegetation, like trees or vines, because most of those plants grow above ground, Powell said. Since grasses grow beneath the soil, fire can wipe out a prairie while keeping them alive.
“What happens with climate change is we have hotter days, and we have a disruption in the normal cycles of moisture, and growth and death, which means they have to burn at different times than they used to,” Powell said. “We see these sort of ridiculous extremes from flood to drought.”
Alongside prairies, Wood said that invasive plant communities are being changed by the weather, and they are beginning to take over more rapidly. While native plants are going dormant in the fall, invasive species continue to thrive.
“What we’re seeing a big shift in is invasive plant communities,” Wood said. “Those temperatures and rain don’t seem to affect them as much as native plants.”
Invasive plants tend to be more aggressive, Wood said, and they don’t have as many natural suppressants, such as bugs, that native ones do.
“When an invasive species moves in, they out-compete a lot of things,” Wood said.
Another thing that changes the way plants are in the area is the plant hardiness zone. A plant hardiness zone is based on the coldest temperature of the year at each location, averaged over a 30-year period. States such as Florida and California sit in zones 9 and 10, where the lowest temperatures are recorded between 20 and 40 degrees, while states such as Minnesota and North Dakota sit at the other end of the spectrum, their temperatures reaching between -40 and -30 degrees.
When the zones change, plants such as flowers, shrubs and trees shift northward. Over the past four decades, the zones have moved and could continue to change, according to an analysis by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Currently, Northwest Indiana is in zone 5, which means the average winter low for the area is between -20 and -10, according to the New York Times. The Southern part of Indiana is in zone 6.
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in a New York Times story, climate change will shift the plant hardiness zone north by 2040, changing Northwest Indiana’s zone to a 6, which means the average winter low would be between -10 to 0 degrees.
This shift not only affects what people in the area can plant, but also what will grow in different areas, Wood said.
“Plant and animal adaptation happens over hundreds of years, and a shift this quickly doesn’t allow a plant community to migrate up in the way that they need to,” Wood said.
As the zones move, the soil in the area changes. Plant species can be lost if they aren’t able to move north with the zone and soil, or adapt to survive in different weather conditions, Wood said.
Warmer winter and spring temperatures also allow plants to break their dormancy up to two weeks earlier than usual in the spring, according to an agriculture report in the Indiana’s Climate Change Impacts Assessment. Breaking dormancy early means that plants may flower earlier, and they risk dying if they flower before the last frost.
“It’s bad for plants to be flowering earlier if we’re going to have a good chance of a cold snap that follows it,” Dukes said. “If they flower earlier and then you get mild conditions afterwards, it wouldn’t necessarily be a problem at all — but if they flower early and then there’s frost, that could ruin your year.”
Wood said when plants, such as spring wildflowers, flower earlier it can also be an issue for both the plant and the insect that pollinates it.
“When those plants emerge early and those insects come out, sometimes those co-evolved species are missing each other,” Wood said.
Plants and their pollinators missing each other can result in not only the death of the plant, but the insect as well. As far as plants go, though, Powell said climate change doesn’t seem to be the only cause of the issues.
“Climate change has just accelerated problems that already existed,” Powell said.