Climate Cast

Minnesota has experienced four significant blowing dust episodes over the past few years, and the uptick in frequency has raised air-quality concerns across the state.

Now, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency will start issuing air quality alerts for blowing dust this summer. Matt Taraldsen, MPCA meteorologist, says the fine particle pollution from dust — technically known as PM10 — is similar to wildfire smoke.

“People are very familiar with PM2.5 or fine particle pollution and wildfire smoke,” Taraldsen said. “PM10 can get into the airways and cause inflammation and cardiopulmonary issues even in healthy people — in the right concentrations.”

Dust can travel to Minnesota from Texas or Oklahoma, and high winds can blow in dust from North and South Dakota as well. Low snowpack and dryer conditions in the Midwest have contributed to loose soil.

“It used to be that we would get snow and it would stay on the ground relatively all winter, and that would prohibit any dust from being lofted because it’s under the snow pack,” he said. “But the past several years, with the exception of 2023, we’ve had open and bare ground for much, if not most, of the winter. So anytime you get these big storms that come in, [with] sustained winds, it can pick up the dust in concentrations enough to impact health.”

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Minnesota has been a part of the solar energy boom that has swept across the nation over the past decade.

Research has shown solar energy is now the cheapest form of electricity in the history of electric power generation, but politics on the state and federal level could trigger challenges for the renewable resource.

MPR News Chief Meteorologist Paul Huttner talked to Brian Martucci, an energy reporter with the Minnesota Reformer, about the issues solar power could face in Minnesota.

Recycled plastics reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 30 to 80 percent compared to creating new plastics. But the process isn’t always waste-free.

Eureka Recycling, a 20-year-old mission-driven zero-waste recycler, has upgraded its facility to ensure recycled materials are effectively repurposed.

“It’s incredible how much less energy it takes,” said Miriam Holsinger, co-president and chief operating officer of Eureka Recycling.

“We really work hard to keep the material we sort as local as possible — a lot of it stays right here in Minnesota, where it gets turned into new products, and 95 percent of what we sort actually stays in the Midwest.”

Holsinger spoke with MPR News chief meteorologist Paul Huttner about how the climate can benefit from recycling materials.

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Tech companies are looking to the land of 10,000 lakes as a suitable environment to expand their data footprint.

About 10 tech giants, such as Microsoft and Meta, are vying to build data centers in Minnesota to support their growing AI networks.

“The Midwest is kind of a big emerging market right now,” said Nick Halter, a Twin Cities reporter for Axios. “That's because we have abundant water, which oftentimes is used to cool these [centers] down, and also because we have much cooler temperatures.”

That’s because data centers in cooler climates require less energy to cool their facilities than those in warm Southern states.

Some tech companies are also targeting Minnesota because of the state’s renewable energy mandates, Halter said.

“The big question here is: How can we get to a place where we have 100 percent renewable energy in Minnesota, which is our goal, while the 10 proposed [data centers] would be the equivalent of the entire state's households’ electricity use?”

To hear the full conversation with Nick Halter and Paul Huttner, click play on the audio player above or subscribe to the Climate Cast podcast.

The mighty Mississippi, which flows from its headwaters in northern Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico, has topped an endangered rivers list.

A report from nonprofit conservation organization American Rivers states that a combination of extreme flood, drought cycles, toxic runoff, and poor river management threatens the Mississippi. The 2,300-mile-long river is a water source for more than 50 cities in the U.S., including several in Minnesota.

Cuts to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (better known as FEMA) are also a concern.

“There's just a lot of questions about what's going to happen to that agency,” said MPR News correspondent Kirsti Marohn​. “FEMA plays a role in reducing flood risks and supporting resilient development in communities along the river, and then also helping communities prepare for disasters and recover from them.”

Marohn covers central Minnesota communities, water and the environment. She joined MPR News chief meteorologist Paul Huttner to explain the threats the river is facing.

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Writer Tamara Dean knew she wanted to live lightly on the planet. Her search to live a productive life while lowering her carbon footprint led her to the Driftless Area of Wisconsin — also known as Bluff Country and the Paleozoic Plateau — with dreams of become a homesteader. Dean shares her experience in her new memoir “Shelter and Storm: At Home in the Driftless.”

She spoke to MPR chief meteorologist Paul Huttner for Climate Cast.

The transcript below has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

I had been spending most of my days in an office, like a lot of people in front of computers, and my partner, David, and I decided we wanted to live healthier lifestyles. We also wanted to live out our environmental principles.

We didn't know where exactly we wanted to start over, but when we drove around the Driftless Area, which is mostly in the southwestern corner of Wisconsin, we recognized that this was a place where we wanted to live.

A citizen scientist is someone who volunteers to study nature. In places like Wisconsin, where the Department of Natural Resources really doesn't have the funding and staffing to cover every species in the state, a citizen scientists can fill that gap and provide information to help professional scientists do their work. It’s not only a rewarding opportunity for people, but it’s also helpful for the state.

We were citizen water monitors for the little river behind our house, and I became interested in surveys for fresh water mussels. They are some of the most endangered creatures in North America, but citizen scientists are studying where they’re still thriving and that helps the people at the DNR know where to focus their efforts in helping their habitat.

I think we have an over-estimation of our potential for solving the climate crisis with technology. It’s definitely a necessary component of addressing the climate situation, but we also need to look at reducing our own footprints.

There are ways we can do that pretty simply, whether it be reducing our travel, reducing our birth rate, or examining our diets. It doesn’t have to be a hardship. It can be something easy and satisfying. You don’t have to take it all on either. I think it can be a joy as well.

I would recommend indulging your curiosity. Find what has energy for you — whether it’s a particular type of landscape or a particular species — and immerse yourself in learning about that.

I often think it’s a shame that we think we have to go to Mars to learn something new, because all around us there are mysteries to pursue. I hope that’s what my book leaves readers with.

The idea that you can walk out your door and be curious and open-minded. And find a mystery that will ignite your own curiosity and passion, and pursue that to create your own story out of it.

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There’s a warming trend in cities across American, and that’s extending allergy season for millions of Americans.

A new study by Climate Central found five cities in Minnesota have increased their pollen season — in some cases by nearly a month. The Twin Cities allergy season has expanded by 27 days, Duluth is seeing an average of 24 extra days of allergy season, while Mankato is experiencing 11 and Rochester is averaging 10 extra days, said Kristoffer Tigue, a reporter for the Minnesota Star Tribune.

“It’s not just the extended pollen season that the studies have have shown are are making allergies worse for people,” said Tigue. “The plants themselves are growing larger, and that’s because there’s more carbon dioxide in the air. There’s even research that suggests that the pollen itself is becoming more allergenic.”

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Minnesota experienced a seasonably cold but relatively snowless winter.

Now, the spring months are making up for lost time by dumping sloppy snowstorms. State climatologist Pete Boulay said what Minnesota is seeing is over time is a different start and end times for the seasons.

“Winter is shifting around a bit,” said Boulay. “We’re not seeing as big of snow storms in November like we used to, but April is becoming a shining moment of winter.”

Boulay said winters have also lost their cold edge. Minnesota isn’t dipping into subzero temperatures like it used to, and each season is getting hard to predict.

“I couldn’t even tell you what next winter is going to be like right now, because anything could happen.”

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By creating the Snow, Ice and Permafrost Research Establishment (SIPRE) in 1949, the U.S. military became one of the earliest climate research groups on the planet.

The group’s mission was to study the science and engineering of the warming Arctic and the national security implications that could follow. University of Vermont professor and geoscientist Paul Bierman wrote about this in his book, “When the Ice Is Gone: What a Greenland Ice Core Reveals About Earth’s Tumultuous History and Perilous Future.”

He spoke to MPR chief meteorologist Paul Huttner for Climate Cast.

The transcript below has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

They actually got interested during World War II, when they occupied parts of Greenland in part to rescue bomber and fighter pilots who'd landed on the ice and realized how ill-equipped they were to operate in frozen environments. They really stepped it up, though, in the early to mid-50s, fighting the Cold War in the Arctic.

From the military’s point of view, climate change is important in variety of ways. It’s certainly important in the Arctic, where the very stability of the ground they’re working on is questionable, but it’s also very important in the sense that when you melt ice sheets, you raise sea level.

That has huge implications for human migration around the world, and for things as simple as five of the U.S. aircraft carriers that are berthed in Virginia — which is a sea-level-rise hot spot and will find their docking facilities under water in the next couple decades.

They mean that in the sense of trying to reduce the risks to active military, reduce the number of global conflicts that will come from climate change, and be prepared for the eventualities of bigger storms, higher temperatures — all those sorts of things that affect maneuverability on the ground to the safety of soldiers.

So in one way, moving toward renewable energy takes them away from dependence on fossil fuels and the need to transport those fossil fuels.

There are estimates that suggest if we let sea level rise uncontrollably, which would be from the melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, it could cost the global economy trillions of dollars in losses because of the flooding that’s going to occur around every coastline.

So the military is also looking, of course, at the prices of fossil fuels. We're at a point now where solar and wind are competitive, if not cheaper, than typical fossil fuel energy sources.

The military drilled the ice core through almost a mile of ice, and then they drilled through about 12 feet of frozen soil. The ice itself goes back about 100,000 years, but the frozen soil takes us back millions.

What’s most important about what they found in that frozen soil is that the upper portion of it — dated to about 400,000 years ago — is full of plant fossils and fossils of insects. Those are important because they are very strong evidence that the ice sheet there had to vanish, and when it vanished, a mile of ice disappeared.

If we don’t control climate change and global warming, at this point, we’re going to repeat the past, and a mile of ice is going to melt again.

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Wind and solar are among the cheapest energy sources available today, but even when clean-energy projects are ready to go, a cumbersome permit process is slowing down their implementation.

Allison Prang wrote a New York Times article about a Minnesota experiment to cut the red tape that is impeding the state’s ability to achieve its clean-energy goals. She spoke to MPR chief meteorologist Paul Huttner about her reporting.  

The transcript below has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

When I talked to Governor Walz, he said it was fair to say that without doing some reform for the state’s permitting process, it would be tough for Minnesota to hit that goal.

I talked to one lawyer who works with companies that are working on projects, getting them approved in the state. He said it’s taken some as long as 13 months, and people are hoping that the permanent reform law could shave off the typical timeline by several months. If it does what they want, it could make it much quicker for projects to come online.

Permitting reform is a very unsexy and yet super crucial topic that the whole country is grappling with. In Washington, members of Congress have tried to tackle the issue, because it does have bipartisan support. But it’s not just a national issue; there are things states can do to tackle the problem.

Like Minnesota, other states have also passed laws trying to make the process easier at home, and sometimes localities are involved. It really depends on where an energy developer is working — what state, what area in the state? That's why it's so complicated. It really, really is situational.

The really big thing that’s happening in the backdrop of all of this is that not only are we seeing the country electrify more broadly — and states and localities have these climate goals — but we’re also going to see an increase in power demand like we haven’t seen in decades. So that’s happening at the same time, and part of that is because we’re seeing more data centers come online. We just need more power as a country. 

A lot of people are watching if the new Congress will be able to get a permitting reform bill over the finish line, what that would look like, and asking would that make permanent renewables easier?

It’s going to be really interesting to see if the country can tackle this problem and make it easier, so that we can kind of meet this really crazy moment of this expected increase in demand.

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