Special Market Update

New Report Issued on Climate Change

Mark Twain said, “Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.”

A new report issued last week is trying to do something about it. The report (commissioned by the Environmental Law and Policy Center and Chicago Council on Global Affairs) suggests that extreme bouts of precipitation and flooding could be the new normal in the Great Lakes region. Click on this link to read the entire report: http://elpc.org/glclimatechange/

(While we may not agree with all of the assumptions and conclusions that are made in this report, it is important to understand the thinking that is going on concerning the climate and its impact on agriculture).

Three of the top five wettest years on record in Chicago have occurred in the last decade, including 2018, which ranked 4^th wettest with 49.2 inches of rain. While the United States has seen annual precipitation increase by 4% between 1901 and 2015, the Great Lakes states have seen a 10% rise over the same period. 

“It’s really not that surprising that we’ve had bizarre flooding events over the last few decades. It connects very clearly with what we expect,” said Donald Wuebbles, a University of Illinois professor of atmospheric sciences and the lead author of the study. A warmer atmosphere holds more moisture. For every one degree of warming, the atmosphere can hold 4% more water vapor that can turn into precipitation. Illinois, for example, has already warmed 1.2 degrees in the last century, and could warm by another 4 degrees by 2050, according to former Illinois state climatologist Jim Angel.

Last week’s report said that extreme precipitation could rise 10 to 40% in southern Wisconsin, the feeder system to many Illinois waterways. This additional precipitation could affect water quality, as stormwater and sewer systems are overpowered, and as fertilizer is swept into waterways, possibly causing algae blooms and bacteria.

The heavy rainfall and runoff has been known to wash fertilizer, animal waste and other pollutants from farm fields into waterways. It can also cause sewer systems to back up. In either scenario, the untreated water can contain an unsafe amount of nitrogen, which can render the water dangerous for human consumption. Fertilizer and sewage can also stimulate algae blooms that can degrade water quality. This, in turn, raises the costs associated with treating water, the new report says.

Wetter winter and springs are forecast, but summer precipitation is anticipated to fall by 5 to 15 percent for most of the Great Lake states by 2100. Corn and soybean production is likely to decline 10 to 30 percent, as saturated farm fields delay planting, and crops endure hotter, drier summers, the report says.