Trend for warmer Midwestern winters expected to continue

DUBUQUE, Iowa — The climate in the Midwest has been getting warmer and wetter over the last 125 years.

“Every season has gotten warmer and the winter is warming at a faster rate than the other seasons in the Midwest,” said Trent Ford, Illinois state climatologist at the University of Illinois.

In general, this weather pattern negatively impacts livestock production with heat stress, forage quality issues and increased diseases. “And out west, we’re talking about water problems,” Ford said during a presentation at the Driftless Region Beef Conference, presented by University of Illinois Extension, Iowa State University Extension and Outreach and University of Wisconsin Extension.

For livestock and human stress, the nighttime temperatures are more predictive of problems, Ford said, because the night is when recovery happens from the heat that has accumulated during the day.

“Across the Midwest, we have fewer summer nights getting below 60 degrees,” the speaker said. “From 1951 to 1980, the average was about 50 summer nights per year and now we’re closer to 40 or 45.”

And even if the daytime temperatures aren’t getting much above 85 to 90 degrees, Ford said, heat stress is still accumulating with the warm nights.

“Models are projecting a continuation of the trend for warming summers and warming summer nights across the Midwest mainly due to the increase in humidity,” the climatologist stated. “If we globally curb carbon dioxide and methane emissions, we still see a projection of 30 to 60 additional nights where we get above 70 degrees in northern Illinois.”

The Midwest is one of the few regions of the globe where summer daytime temperatures haven’t significantly increased. “It’s the heat stress at night that comes from the higher humidity that puts additional stress on animals,” the speaker said.

Spring has gotten consistently wetter across the Midwest by one to three inches of precipitation since 1900, and more intense rain events. “That causes problems with pasture conditions and it also brings disease problems,” Ford said. “When you overlay that with the increase in humidity, that means a more humid, damp environment.”

With hotter temperatures, more heat stress and increased humidity, the speaker said, that will impact changes in health with tick and mosquito diseases, contaminated water sources from flooding and more runoff from fields and increased incidences of heat stroke.

“As a result of the increased winter temperatures, we’ve seen an expanded range of several types of ticks that we either hadn’t seen in the upper Midwest or we hadn’t seen the same incidence,” the climatologist reported.

One example is the lone star tick which brings a number of diseases, including alpha-gal syndrome. “When someone gets bit, it makes them have an allergy to red meat and we’re seeing this more especially across the southern Midwest,” Ford said.

“This expansion in the range of ticks is directly linked with warmer temperatures because the ticks are able to overwinter further north and spread at a higher rate,” the speaker stated.

The One Health initiative, Ford said, is focused on understanding that human, animal and environmental health are all linked together. “If one of these fails or is not given the attention it deserves, then everything will fail,” he said. “I think COVID really put that in the forefront.”

Healthy animal production is essential for human health, the speaker said. “When we think about climate change, any impact to any of these, impacts the entire system,” he added.

A research paper a couple of years ago, Ford said, focused on climate change and the impacts of flooding, extreme heat, dust storms and carbon dioxide emissions.

“Some of the direct impacts of changing environmental conditions are more exposure to things like ticks, degraded pasture quality because of too much or not enough rain, food and water quality and quantity problems from runoff or contamination from lagoons into drinking water and variable immune response when animals experience stress,” Ford said.

Climate change can provide opportunities for livestock producers. “With reduced production elsewhere, livestock production can expand in the Midwest,” the speaker said. “You can’t raise animals without water, so even if the demand for meat plateaus, we’re going to have to think about the distribution of where we are producing it.”

Increasing biodiversity through conservation land management is a really important step towards a resilient system, the climatologist said.

“For climate change mitigation, not cultivating forest and grassland areas for cropland agriculture is a big one and not just in the U.S. but globally,” Ford said. “Grazing and forest systems take in a tremendous amount of carbon so conserving those systems is a really important part of a portfolio of climate resilience.”