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Climate Change in Indiana Part Four: Indiana’s Severe Weather Future

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by Nathaniel Weinzapfel

Introduction:

First held in 1970 and recently reaching its 50th year anniversary, Earth Day is an annual holiday held to demonstrate support for environmental protection and celebrate life on our planet, with over a billion people participating in related events worldwide. This holiday has been extended to encompass all of April, in what has been aptly named Earth Month. In celebration of Earth Month there have been a series of news stories that began last week focusing on how Indiana is likely to be affected by climate change. Researchers have rigorously studied what Indiana’s future will entail, and these stories will cover the likely outcomes and provide some specific context. This is the fourth episode of the series, focusing on the future of severe weather in Indiana based around an interview with Dr. Cody Kirkpatrick, a Senior Lecturer with the Department of Earth & Atmospheric Sciences at Indiana University.

Extreme Weather News Reports Segment:

And we begin at six o’clock with an I-Team 8 investigation and a warning about Indiana’s electric grid this winter. A new report suggests that a major winter storm could lead parts or all of the state without electricity. This is a big deal.

We’re joining you from Kilroy’s tonight, right on Kirkwood Avenue here in Bloomington. And as you can see, there’s still a lot of cleanup happening here from those floodwaters last night. Those with Kilroy’s tell us they’re hoping to open by Tuesday. 

It’s tomorrow that our severe weather threat moves in. Check this out. Almost the entire state of Indiana is in that enhanced risk. That’s a level three out of five. That means severe weather is going to be likely and this threat is going to be an overnight threat that makes it even more dangerous.

And the cold is stretching across the Midwest. The mayor of Indianapolis urged residents to stay indoors. “Even 10 minutes of exposure may very well be harmful.”

Extreme Weather:

Among the effects of climate change most publicized are extreme weather events. While it is still difficult to pinpoint how climate change might have impacted a singular historical event, scientists have found that overall, the planet is likely to experience an intensification of heat waves, droughts, storms, and winter weather. These more extreme variations in the weather of Indiana pose quite a danger to the state. Severe weather events can increase the amount of illnesses and deaths among vulnerable populations and lead to billions of dollars worth of damages to local communities state-wide. Essential services, such as emergency response vehicles, water supplies, and electricity could also be temporarily disrupted during these events. Overall, if climate change continues, this increase in severe weather events could harm Indiana and its Hoosier residents.

Heat Waves:

In the previous episode, heat waves were discussed in regard to its impact on Hoosier farmers. To reiterate the findings, heat waves are projected to become more common due to climate change. Overall, summers in Indiana will be hotter. It is predicted that the number of days above 90 degrees Fahrenheit could last for about two and a half months on average during the summer months. While for many people this just means they will stay inside more or head to the pool, these events can actually be quite deadly, as Dr. Kirkpatrick describes:

“Here in Indiana, I think a lot of people don’t consider heat waves as severe weather or as a type of extreme weather. But on average, in the United States, heat causes the most fatalities, the most weather related fatalities every year. Greater number than tornadoes, than flooding, and hurricanes on average, every year. And with warmer temperatures that we know are occurring, and are going to continue to occur, you can, with those warmer temperatures, evaporate more water into the atmosphere. So our heat index values, the measure that we use for how uncomfortable it is on a summer day, will also go up and will be higher more often. And so one of the big things we can expect here in Indiana is that summers are going to be all around a little bit more dangerous, because they will be both warmer and more humid.”

As Dr. Kirkpatrick explained, heat waves are extremely dangerous and can even exacerbate extreme weather. Coinciding with heat waves are droughts, which may hurt the water supply and can lead to prime wildfire conditions that could impact parts of Indiana’s forests. Similarly, the urban heat island effect, which is the increase in warmth in a city due to structures such as buildings, will intensify, and keep cities much hotter than surrounding rural areas. This makes finding a place outside to cool off more difficult.

However, the most important risk lies in the damage that could be done to human health. As stated previously, heat waves lead to the most weather-related deaths on average every year. High air temperatures can result in heat stroke and dehydration risks, which hurt the cardiovascular and nervous systems. Warmer weather can also harm the air quality for many areas of the state due to the increase in ozone levels present at the surface. Ozone, in large quantities, can wreak havoc on the body and lead to both lung and heart related issues. Dr. Kirkpatrick explains who will be impacted most by these risks associated with heat waves:

“Anybody that is vulnerable, so the elderly, children, the homeless population, anyone who is vulnerable to heat stress, heat related stress, will have to be much more vigilant as the years go by in the coming decades, because this risk will increase.”

Severe Flooding:

While some months may experience these warmer temperatures and heat waves, another threat posed by climate change is an increase in flooding. Research from the Environmental Protection Agency has found that since 1970, the average annual rainfall has increased for the majority of the Midwest by about 5 to 10 percent. However, what is most dangerous is the discovery that on the four wettest days of the year, the amount of precipitation received has increased by about 35%. These days are the ones that have the highest potential to result in the worst floods. Dr. Kirkpatrick details this phenomenon and the resulting consequences:

“One of the things that we have already seen is an increase in rainfall here in the Midwest. We’ve seen that over the last few decades. And in the statistics that we’ve looked at, one thing that seems to be happening is that those, what we would call high end days, the extreme rainfall days, those have, in some cases, gotten more extreme. So on the heaviest days, or the days with heaviest rain, the totals are even higher. Those days certainly put extra stress on all of our river systems from the small creeks and streams that you have running behind your house or under the road or to even to the bigger more major river systems. And that extra stress comes because when the rains are very heavy, these thunderstorm rains that we get or when we get rain for several days in a row, much of the water is runoff, it goes directly into the streams, because the ground will saturate pretty quickly. And so that extra stress on the river systems of all sizes is something that we will have to be aware of and watchful for”

Central Indiana is no stranger to extreme flooding. At the start of this program, you heard a news report that explained the damage done to Kilroy’s on Kirkwood, one of the most well-known bars in Bloomington and found right next to the campus of Indiana University. These floods occurred last June and were a result of heavy rains and thunderstorms moving over Central Indiana. Dr. Kirkpatrick provides more details:

It was sometime in June, I think when the campus river flooded and part of Kirkwood there by Kirkwood, and Indiana flooded. And I think there was probably three or four feet of standing water down there. You can see some of the newspaper stands were floated and I think there was a car or two that were caught up in that also. That was one of those special extreme cases that developed from multiple thunderstorms. So you had a period of several hours where thunderstorms kept forming over and over near Bloomington really almost along Highway 46 for some reason. So Bloomington, Ellettsville, almost all the way up to Terre Haute, and they kept developing in the same place for a few hours. And one thunderstorm on its own will not often cause something like that. But when you get thunderstorms for hours and hours, you are going to overwhelm even the best drainage system. Even the best sewage system cannot handle that much rain in that short of a period of time. There’s really nothing you can do those events are going to happen sometimes

For Bloomington, this was certainly a day in which too much stress was placed onto the drainage system of the city. This event resulted in over 17 water rescues by the Bloomington Fire Department and the death of a Bloomington resident. In response to what he called a “once in a century rain,” Bloomington Mayor John Hamilton announced the continuation of the Hidden River Pathway Project, which seeks to connect the flood-prone areas of Kirkwood to an area south of the street in which better water infrastructure could alleviate some of the problems. While efforts are being made to prevent a future event from happening, the mayor believes that due to climate change, more events like this are likely to occur and be even more intense.

Winter Storms & Lake-Effect Snow:

Other areas of Indiana are likely to have their own problems. For example, a unique event that occurs in the weather of Northwestern Indiana is lake-effect snow due to Lake Michigan. This weather pattern is what gives Chicago its extremely cold winters. For many, these events coincide with heavy snow that makes commutes practically impossible due to the severe conditions, and can often lead to airport delays and power outages. When this coincides with strong wind gusts, blizzards form, and freezing temperatures dominate the region. While this is one extreme, the lake-effect snow can also result in an average snowball fight, non-serious type of weather day. Dr. Kirkpatrick provides more insight as to how lake-effect snow works and how climate change might modify the winter weather in this section of the state:

“Lake effect snow and Lake Michigan are one of the fun things to experience in northern Indiana, I think in the wintertime. And one of the things about lake effect snow and like Michigan is that climate change does not mean that winter will go away here in Indiana. We will still have cold weather, we will still get snow. And for lake effect snow specifically, in northern Indiana, when you get that cold Canadian air that moves over the lake, and then onto the land. That’s what produces lake-effect snow and so we will still get cold air from Canada. And as long as the lake is not frozen, you can get enough heat transfer from the water into the air to warm up the air and give it water vapor and produce clouds and snow. And we will still get that in the winter. And actually, it might be possible, we’re still studying this, but it might be possible that we could have more opportunity for lake-effect snow because the warming of the climate means that the Great Lakes are not freezing over for as long every winter. The water temperatures are a little bit warmer. So maybe there’s a little bit more heat available from the water that can be taken up by the air and turned into clouds and snow in the winter. So that’s one that we’ve got to watch, it might seem maybe counterintuitive right? That a warming climate could produce more snow but if it warms the water and gives us more chances to do that it is possible that that could happen.”

The Upper-Atmosphere, Tornadoes, & Severe Thunderstorms:

Some of the greatest influences on the weather in our state and the rest of the country are the upper-atmospheric conditions that are prime for the development of extreme weather events. In the atmosphere, temperature differences are what drive the changes in wind speeds that influence weather events on the ground. For example, scientists believe that climate change might be impacting the jet stream found in the northern hemisphere that typically blows west to east with the flows moving north and south. Dr. Kirkpatrick highlights how the shifts in the jetstream associated with climate change will likely alter the weather here in Indiana:

“So with climate change, one of the things that we are able to get a good handle on and we are really confident about how things will change in the future, are these big, large atmospheric patterns, flow patterns and circulation patterns and such. One of the big things that we are likely to see changes in is what we call the jetstream. The fast moving ribbon of air high in the atmosphere that really works to move our weather systems around. We have seen decades of warming in the Arctic already. And we know that has disrupted the temperature differences across the globe that produce winds in the atmosphere. And it is likely that the jet stream will start to maybe fluctuate north and south more often, become more wavy. What that could do is lead to more surges of warm and cold air here in Indiana more often. You know, we talk about how in the winter, and even here in the spring, we get two or three days of cold weather and then two or three days of warm weather and it just sort of oscillates back and forth. Those surges of warm and cold could become more often. And I think that’s something that if the jetstream continues to fluctuate more often that’s something we could come to expect.”

These fluctuations, according to many scientists, are being intensified by climate change and likely leading to more extreme weather events occurring. Such events include severe thunderstorms and tornadoes, which have made headlines recently due to the amount of tornadoes that have impacted the Midwest, Great Plains, and the South frequently throughout the last year. The conditions that can lead to the creation of these storm systems have become more common. With this in mind, Dr. Kirkpatrick gives an explanation of how thunderstorms are going to change and what researchers know now: 

“So their intensity or their frequency, how often they happen, how thunderstorms are going to change as the climate continues to change is something that we’re still trying to get a better handle on. And part of the reason that has been kind of challenging is that individual thunderstorms are really small. An individual thunderstorm might be 10, or 15 miles across, in size. And that’s it. And so trying to understand how those small phenomena might change, when it is the climate of the entire globe, that is changing, has been, and continues to be a little bit challenging. So we’re still trying to hone in on that. But we know that to get thunderstorms, we have ingredients that we need. We need warm and humid air, which we will definitely have. And for those thunderstorms to become severe, producing damaging winds, large hail or tornadoes, we need an additional ingredient wind shear, we need the wind speed and the wind direction changing as you go higher up into the atmosphere compared to here at the ground. And one of the ways that we’re trying to track how severe weather could change in the future is just to ask the question, well, how many days a year do we have all of those ingredients come together in the same place? At the same time? Most of the studies that we have so far show that across most of the United States, we expect those ingredients that produce the severe thunderstorms that can cause wind, hail and tornadoes to come together more frequently. That is the expectation for now, we are still trying to understand though, exactly where and exactly how often because remember, thunderstorms and tornadoes are even smaller thunderstorms or small phenomena. So pinpointing exactly, who will get how much more severe weather and exactly how much is still open. But overall, in aggregate, the expectation is that they’ll probably happen a little bit more often.”

When it comes to Indiana and the resulting effects of climate change, it seems that all areas of the state are prone to the severe weather that is expected to occur more frequently in the future. Northwestern Indiana may have more lake-effect snow related events, while Central Indiana may have more floods. The knowledge about climate change’s overall impact on Indiana’s weather is an ongoing source of study, but at the moment, steps are being taken to prepare for what is currently known. Local governments have experienced severe weather events and are implementing solutions that might mitigate the effects of another one. Being knowledgeable about the increasing frequency of severe weather events due to climate change is an effective tool to convey the reasons why sustainable and achievable adjustments should be made to become more environmentally friendly and prepare the state for climate change.

Tomorrow, join us as we discuss the steps being taken across the state to develop plans in anticipation for the effects of climate change in an interview with the Executive Director of the Hoosier Environmental Council.

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