Field Notes on Climate

– Ami Eckard-Lee: You've probably heard someone say, "If climate change is real, why do we still have blizzards?"

This is likely because people still confuse weather and climate.

They're related, but they are different.

Weather refers to the short-term conditions, like our day-to-day forecast.

Climate refers to long-term trends and how conditions are changing year to year.

Overall, the Earth is getting warmer, and this does some crazy stuff to our daily weather that might not always reflect this change how we'd expect.

Extreme droughts, flash floods, whiteout blizzards, and more are all examples of severe weather events.

These aren't new, but a warmer climate means less stability in our weather patterns, leading to a higher frequency of these events.

And these severe weather events are dangerous for people, the environment, and our food resources.

So, what happens when weather patterns start to become more severe?

[bright music] Severe weather has a major impact on the agricultural industry.

Our crops aren't resilient enough to withstand flash droughts or sustained rain events, but that's exactly what they're being subjected to.

Climate change is forcing farmers to think proactively about what changes are coming so that when things do happen, their farms are already prepared.

What kind of impact are you noticing climate change is having on the farming industry?

– Chris Wilson: We, as an industry, have really narrowed in the things that we're growing and raising.

We're only growing a single crop or a couple of crops, and if we do get extreme weather, they get wiped out together.

And I can tell you, not every year, every crop's successful.

- What kinds of changes are you making now to plan for that?

- Thirty years ago, we were growing two crops.

We're growing ten crops now today.

And that has been part of the strategy.

That is the long-term planning of, like, how do we just grow more things, more diversified things that basically make a more resilient process and a more resilient outcome?

- Why are diverse systems more resilient than a monocrop?

- Some years, this will do well and this won't.

If we're growing one crop, it's like flipping a coin.

If we're growing ten crops, we know we're gonna have six or seven good ones.

Six or seven good ones, for us, is a good year.

It's a way of ensuring kind of our production system, and cows are gonna have something to eat, and we're gonna produce milk, and it feeds people and puts food in grocery stores.

– Ami: Okay, so it's kind of an experiment.

– Chris: It is.

We might fail, but we might be successful too.

That's a lot of what we're trying to figure out is, like, how do we adapt to something that we don't even know what it looks like yet?

– Ami: Yeah.

- We have ideas, we have potential weather and climate impacts, but we don't know absolutely how it's gonna impact things on the ground, in the dirt.

So, we're broadcasting a lot of seeds and trying a lot of different things.

- As the climate changes, the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events are increasing, and farmers have to adapt their farming practices to better withstand these changes.

But how can we accurately predict what the impacts of climate change will be on the agricultural industry in the future?

Some researchers are looking to the plants themselves, specifically trees.

Let's meet up with a researcher who studies tree rings to help us predict climate change trends in the future.

Can you explain how trees grow and how they put on tree rings?

– Evan Larson: That's a great question.

So, trees grow by taking energy from the Sun.

They take carbon out of the air and they take nutrients from the soil.

And they combine it all through the process of photosynthesis.

And that's the building of sugars that then they use to build wood.

And every year, they're building another ring.

And then in the fall, they go dormant.

They go to sleep, basically, for the winter.

It's too cold to grow.

And then in the spring, they'll start growing again, put on the next year's ring.

And so, water is really important for you and me.

It's really important for trees.

If a tree is really dry, that means that it cannot photosynthesize as much or even as efficiently.

- Okay.

- And so, that means that they have to work really hard to get enough energy to add a ring.

And that's expressed in either a narrow ring for a drought or a wide ring on those really wet years.

- How is this information used to tell us more about climate change?

- It's a great question 'cause we have records from our thermometers and rain gauges in a lot of places, but they only go back about 100 years.

The problem is that climate changes on these really big timescales, way longer than our instrumental records go.

These trees have been living here for 500 years, and we know that every drought and every big wet year, they are now recording that in the width of their rings.

Dendrochronology is the study of time through the rings of trees.

Knowing what a wide and what a narrow ring represents, we can then use the tree rings to reconstruct how much rain fell in the past.

And so, what we can do with dendrochronology is actually start to predict.

– Ami: Mm-hmm.

- We know what it is right now, but what's it gonna be?

- So, the tree rings vary in their size, and you can directly tell how that had to do with the rainfall.

- Bingo.

And what it does, this is really cool.

It creates almost like a barcode in time.

- Whoa!

- Fingerprint.

- Yeah, it really does.

– Evan: This is a record of climate change.

- Okay.

- So, this is one of the samples from this site.

That really wide ring?

– Ami: Mm-hmm.

– Evan: That was a good year.

– Ami: Oh, yeah.

- Followed by a narrow ring?

That was a drought.

And so, as we come out here, look at that here.

– Ami: Those are really narrow.

- That's about ten years of really suppressed growth.

So, you see this kind of ebb and flow of the climate.

Some years are good, some years are hard.

And so, the clustering of these really narrow rings, that's the kind of stuff that, that's pretty scary from a farmer's perspective.

- Oh, yeah.

– Evan: 'Cause you might be able to handle one drought.

But what about a five-year continuous drought?

– Ami: Yeah.

- That's big time.

But the question is... - Why?

- ...why was it dry?

That's what we're working out.

And so, the trees that we have growing on the bluffs in the Driftless area, based off of the width of their rings, are not just telling us just how much rain fell, but it's also starting to tell us about these really big circulation patterns of how the world's climate is changing.

So, even while we're talking about droughts, we're also seeing swings in the other way and these really, really wet times.

So, our rains are getting more intense and our droughts are getting more intense.

- Extremes.

- So, what do you do?

And so, that's the fun of science is that we're figuring it out.

We know what we need to do.

We need to learn more from the trees.

We need to better understand our climate.

And we need to keep pushing that understanding forward so that we can take that information back to the farmers and the water resource managers and the communities who need to manage their water.

- Mm-hmm.

By studying tree growth patterns from the past, scientists can predict how climate change might affect our agricultural crops in the future.

This is some pretty incredible science that's still rather unknown to nonexperts, and that's part of the problem.

Science is often a topic that feels inaccessible to a lot of people.

And bridging the communication gap between scientists and the general public is a challenge.

But that is exactly what the Flow Project does.

The Flow Project is a program that connects scientists with artists so they can collaborate and create art inspired by scientific research.

Why did you choose to get involved with the Flow Project?

– Evelyn Zadzilka: I think the biggest difference we can make in climate change, at least as an artist, is being able to communicate the ideas behind climate change in a way that's accessible to people.

It just takes a slightly different approach.

- Yeah, a creative one.

Can you show me your project?

- For sure, yeah.

- It's growing!

[laughs] What are you hoping to convey through this piece of art?

- I was really hoping to get across the idea that different tree rings and different sections of the tree might transport different amounts of water, especially during different years, as represented by the thicker or more dense strands of blue.

- What did you learn by combining this art and this science?

Did anything stand out to you?

- I think art is a beautiful way of interpreting science.

It makes it so easy to fall into it and, like, learn without even trying to learn, whether that's water usage or climate change throughout the centuries.

I really hope people take away the idea that trees have so much to show us if we know how to look.

- You don't have to be a scientist to make a difference in climate change.

Finding solutions is all about collaborating with people who have different perspectives, experimenting with new ideas, and using the tools we already have to look at something through a new lens.

Experiment with new methods like Chris.

Learn to communicate in new ways like Evelyn, or look to the past to learn about the future, like Evan.

Solutions grow from looking and learning.

So, be curious.

Take the time to look closely at the details and learn how they fit into the big picture.

You never know what solution you might find just by asking the right question.

I said it wrong.

How is dendrochron-- - Close.

- Chro-nology - Chro.

- How is dendochronology-- - Nope.

[laughs] - Ami: Ah!