Prof. Tracy Twine | Minnesota’s Changing Climate: A Northern Perspective of the 21st Century

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Abstract:
The north-central region of the United States is known for hot summers and cold winters. And while winters are still long and cold, they are not as cold as they used to be. In Minnesota, iconic wildlife like loons and moose, activities like ski races and hockey tournaments, and Indigenous traditions like wild rice cultivation are threatened. In summer, urban heat islands can exacerbate morbidity and mortality from heat events. My research group has dynamically downscaled global climate model projections at 10 km resolution across Minnesota and is currently updating this to a 4 km resolution. These data show that the winter warming trend will continue but that summers will also get warmer. Snow depth will decrease significantly across the state and the number of ‘hot’ days will increase, suggesting increased risk to public health especially in urban areas. While northern forests are expected to expand broadleaf species at the expense of needleleaf trees, our crop modeling simulations show that farmer adaptation (e.g., shifting planting dates and changing cultivars) may offset projected declines in yields of corn and soybean.

Biosketch:

Tracy Twine is an associate professor in the Department of Soil, Water, and Climate and a Fellow of the Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota. Her work focuses on the exchanges of energy and water near the Earth’s surface over a variety of landscapes including natural and managed ecosystems and urban areas. Her group has used a dense temperature sensor network to characterize the urban heat island of the Minneapolis-St Paul metropolitan area. She is a developer of the Agro-IBIS dynamic global vegetation model that has been used that to evaluate biophysical and biogeochemical impacts from land cover change, projected climate change, and increases in carbon dioxide concent

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