Climate Cast

Summer is in its waning weeks and weather at the Great Minnesota Get-Together has been fair — for the most part. MPR News meteorologists Paul Huttner, Sven Sunggard and Mandy Thalhuber hosted their annual Climate Cast conversation in front of an audience at the Minnesota State Fair. Together, they reflected on weather patterns from all four seasons. Audience members shared their questions, too, about Minnesota’s changing climate and shifting climate patterns.This discussion was recorded at the Minnesota State Fair on Aug. 27. To hear the full conversation, click play on the audio player above or subscribe to the Climate Cast podcast.

Fireflies across the U.S. have seen a robust surge in growth this summer in part to a wetter weather pattern. But those fiery little critters — which some call lightning bugs — might be in a steady decline. “Insect populations are known to vary from year to year,” said Eric Berger, a freelance journalist for The Guardian. “A one-year increase is not enough to indicate that there has been a reversal in the downward trajectory of fireflies.”Berger added that scientists do not have baseline data for firefly species and only recently started to monitor populations. “A lot of what they're using is anecdotal evidence, but they have started to set up monitoring sites to inventory fireflies so that they can determine whether the population has increased or decreased,” he said. Of the studies conducted so far, Berger says fireflies face a number of threats from extended periods of drought due to climate change, light pollution, habitat destruction and the use of pesticides. To hear the full conversation, click play on the audio player above or subscribe to the Climate Cast podcast.

The smoky summer of 2025 has produced a near record number of air quality alerts for Minnesota. Most of this summer smoke has drifted in from these massive Canadian wildfires where more than 16 million acres of forest has burned in Canada this year.MPR News chief meteorologist Paul Huttner talked with Matthew Taraldsen, a meteorologist with the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA), about poor air quality and reason behind the state’s smoke-filled summers.The following has been lightly edited for clarity. Listen to the full conversation by clicking the player button above or subscribe to the Climate Cast podcast. First, some good news. The smoke has drifted away, and there’s the possibility of rain in some Canadian wildfire zones. Can that possibly limit our smoke over the next week or two? Yes, it definitely can. The areas that have been on fire have also been extremely dry, and so it likely isn’t enough to put out the fires, but it will definitely kind of dampen down the fire activity and limit the amount of smoke that the fires do emit. This has been quite a summer when it comes to air quality alerts. How close is the state to hitting record? We’ve had 19 alerts this year so far. Our current record is 53, so we’re not quite to record, but we’re above record pace. We’re higher than we were at 2023 at this point in the season. No matter how you cut it, it’s a very high-impact wildfire season. Most of our smoke this year is coming from Canada. That was also the case in 2023 when over 45 million acres burned in that country. What can we say about wildfire trends in the U.S. and Canada, and smoke in Minnesota, in the past few decades? The short answers is, it’s definitely on the rise. There’s been plenty of research out there in the western U.S. that the wildfire trends are growing as our climate warms. In Canada, the data until last year was a little bit more ambiguous. But there’s definitely a signal that what we’re seeing is likely being influenced with climate change.I think what what we’re seeing this year is likely still going to be an outlier. But I do think going forward, we’re likely to see at least some smoke impacts every year. We’ve also been having volatile, organic compounds inside the smoke that have also been serving as a pretty powerful base for ozone formation and seeing higher ozone days in ways we haven’t seen before. It’s kind of a one-two-punch. We hear a lot about climate change and wildfires versus forest management and fire suppression. How do you extinguish fire in 1.2 billion acres of boreal forest in remote areas with few roads?You don’t, is the short answer. In Minnesota, we think of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area as being remote, and it is to an extent. But Canada takes it to a whole new level.Canada has remote areas the size of the state of Texas and when you get a fire that starts there, there is no easy way to put that fire out, unless you air drop in firefighters who will then hand dig fire lines. This year, you have fires that are burning roughly the size of the state of South Carolina — think of how long it would take to hand carve fire lines around an entire U.S. state. On the other side, when those people are out, far away from civilization, if something were to happen more locally, they’re no longer on the field and you have to bring them back. So they’re letting them burn just because they don’t have the manpower to extinguish them all. It’s a multifaceted problem, but I think people lose sight of just how incredibly large this area is with no roads, no water lines, nothing out there. Your tools to control those fires are very limited. I know you’re in the air quality business and not in politics, but people are complaining about forest management, both the build up of fuels by suppressing fires and the let-it-burn approach. Now people are blaming Canada for not putting out fires. So what is it?The other point is that this is not just impacting the U.S. In Flin Flon, Manitoba, the air quality last month was over 500 for the entire month. So this is impacting people in Canada as much as it’s impacting people the United States, and no one’s happy with it. What’s your overall message to Minnesotans about our summer air quality and climate change going forward? I think the big thing to take away is to be vigilant. We’ve heard from a lot of people that checking the air quality has really become of part of their daily routine — just like you would check the normal weather forecast.That’s probably the most prudent thing. Check the air quality, have a plan to deal with smoke, wear a mask. It will protect you. Be prepared if you are outside in the smoke, and listen to your body.

The Trump Administration has claimed that greenhouse gases don’t endanger people. And last month, the Environmental Protection Agency said it intends to rescind a landmark 2009 legal opinion — effectively ending all its climate regulations.This all comes on the cusp of a rapidly-warming planet fueling extreme weather events. A hotter planet poses an existential crisis on multiple fronts, said Alan Weisman, journalist and author of “Hope Dies Last: Visionary People Across the World, Fighting to Find Us a Future.” “We’re all feeling the heat right now, but we’re not the only creatures on earth that are suffering from climate change,” he said. “Many of [the] species that we're dependent on pollinate our food [and] become our food. Species enrich our soil, filter the air and produce oxygen. They are all also threatened by climate change.” While mankind needs to address this problem, Weisman said his research allowed him to uncover hope in the many ways people are taking climate action in their own hands — from fusion energy technology at The Massachusetts Institute of Technology to winning climate lawsuits in the Netherlands.“It’s a combination of different things, in a lot of different places, that are each contributing to helping to slow down climate change before it gets out of control.” To hear the full conversation, click play on the audio player above or subscribe to the Climate Cast podcast.

Despite efforts from some governments to slowly pull away from climate regulations and actions, one writer discovered a climate revolution through a combination of technology, science and community.“I was looking for our realistic hopes, when we're standing at an existential brink,” said Alan Weisman, author of “Hope Dies Last: Visionary People Across the World, Fighting to Find Us a Future.”“Hope is an active verb, and in place after place I found things that just completely surprised me,” he said.For example, Weisman discovered a modular, wireless energy-sharing system in one of the world’s largest refugee camps in Bangladesh, where solar-powered houses connect via Wi-Fi for peer-to-peer energy exchange.“By the end of it, I was so amazed by the solutions that people were coming up with who simply refuse to quit trying,” Weisman said. “These are not people who wait around for miracles to happen.”To hear the full conversation, click play on the audio player above or subscribe to the Climate Cast podcast.

Minnesota’s clear, cool lakes are heating up over the summer, and those warmer waters can produce a toxic agal bloom.“Blue-green algae is bacteria,” said Kim Laing, a surface monitoring manager with the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency. “It often looks like pea soup [or] green paint; sometimes it might have a smell to it. It thrives in warm, shallow, nutrient-rich lakes.” Water that’s warmer than 75 degrees along with calm, sunny weather is a perfect recipe for blue-green algae, he said. “We have had three to four degrees higher average July and August surface water temperatures in Minnesota lakes than compared to 50 years ago,” Laing said. “Our waters are warming, we have less ice during the winter.” This means ripe conditions for blue-green algal blooms, which can be harmful to people and their pets.To hear the full conversation, click play on the audio player above or subscribe to the Climate Cast podcast.

President Donald Trump’s massive budget bill eliminates tax credits and incentives for small and large scale solar and wind projects in Minnesota. It’s also projected to increase electricity bills across the state. The clean energy industry in Minnesota is now trying to figure out a new path forward in the wake of the massive federal budget bill where credits will dry up at the end of the year. “There’s no phase-down period,” said All Energy Solar co-founder and CEO Michael Allen. “At the end of 2025, the residential tax credit is being eliminated, the commercial tax credit has a slightly longer extension, but it’s still also pretty painful for the industry and ultimately on the commercial side.” Allen explained that energy still needs to be produced — somewhere — and the utility industry will likely buy or generate electricity from traditional sources: oil, coal and gas. “If you look at it from a cost comparison, solar and wind consistently beat out those traditional forms of electricity when it comes to cost,” Allen said. “The expectation is that consumers in Minnesota will ultimately have to pay higher electricity prices because of these adjustments to the tax credits.” Allen added, from policy standpoint, the clean energy industry will look to individual states to step up, including Minnesota which has a 100 precent carbon-free goal by 2040.  To hear the full conversation, click play on the audio player above or subscribe to the Climate Cast podcast.

Will Minnesota become a climate refuge for business? A survey conducted by MIT Technology Review Insights, in conjunction with the Michigan Economic Development Corporation, asked 300 senior level executives in 14 industries how climate change is impacting their company’s bottom line. The overwhelming answer was that many companies have been harmed, to some degree, by climate change. And nearly half said Minnesota and the Midwest are the best places to relocate their business to minimize climate impacts.“Texas, California, New York — these are three states that actively experience the consequences of climate change,” said Kristoffer Tigue, a reporter for the Minnesota Star Tribune. Tigue said insurance premiums have also skyrocketed nationwide, and some states impacted by extreme weather events, like California, home insurance is no longer available. The Midwest offers a refuge from those issues. “It's milder thanks to our location in the middle of the country. We don’t get major wildfires, and we definitely don’t experience hurricanes and we tend to have an abundance of natural resources, including water.” Tigue explained that climate change is just one factor that would determine whether a business decides to relocate, and that just 6 percent of executives who took part in the survey said they’re considering a move in the next five years.To hear the full conversation, click play on the audio player above or subscribe to the Climate Cast podcast.

An increase in water vapor in the atmosphere is driving more extreme weather around the world.How is that playing out here in Minnesota?John Abraham, thermal sciences professor and mechanical engineering program director at University of St. Thomas, shared more about the little-known but growing climate concern.To hear the full conversation, click play on the audio player above or subscribe to the Climate Cast podcast.

This week brought another significant tornado outbreak to parts of Minnesota. Downtowns for the Twin Cities, Rochester and Duluth were spared from any storm damage, but are cities safer from tornadoes than rural parts of Minnesota? Does the urban heat island effect spare urban residents from a tornado tearing through their cities? “The urban heat island probably would not save you if the storm were in a position to enter that urban area,” said climatologist Kenneth Blumenfeld. “We should definitely disabuse ourselves of this myth.”Blumenfeld, who has researched urban tornados, said the probability of tornadoes striking skyscraper-filled cities like the Twin Cities, or smaller downtowns, are just as high as elsewhere. “All the big cities, [in] tornado prone regions like the Midwest, the South and the Great Plains, have relatively high amounts of tornado activity — it’s a lesson for all of us that tornadoes can and do hit cities.”To hear the full conversation, click play on the audio player above or subscribe to the Climate Cast podcast.

Electric vehicle use in Minnesota boomed over the past decade due to the popular fleet of Tesla vehicles driving into the market. However, the Q1 auto sales report from earlier this year, showed a drop in sales for Tesla’s EVs. The indication that there might be a slowing popularity for the brand had some experts blame the company’s CEO Elon Musk and his relationship with American politics. Even Gov. Tim Walz took at jab at Musk and the company’s business woes. “The governor has certainly continued, to some degree, his feud with Elon Musk,” said Walker Orenstein, energy, natural resources and sustainability reporter for the Minnesota Star Tribune. “[Walz] jokes about it not being the best idea, because Elon Musk is a very rich man.”Politics could be a driving force in the drop in Tesla sales, but Orenstein explained the EV growing market is another culprit. “Tesla’s share of the EV market was declining well before [Q1 auto sales] — I think that it reflects more options that are available to people,” Orenstein said. “At this point in time, the governor doesn’t need Tesla and Musk quite to the same degree, and that’s because the marketplace for EVs has just grown so much.”New EV companies, and well-established automakers have been electrifying the EV market across the country, but cold weather and a lack of model options are also the reason why Minnesotans haven’t fully embraced the technology. To hear the full conversation, click play on the audio player above or subscribe to the Climate Cast podcast.

For the past eleven years, the planet has been consecutively warmer each year. It’s a trend that has climate scientists and policy makers worried.In 2024, global temperatures reached 1.5 degrees Celsius above the preindustrial record, according to the World Meteorological Organization and the Copernicus Climate Change Service. It’s the level of warming that those who work for climate solutions have been trying to avoid. “Now the question is: What are we going to do next? What is the next goal going to be?” said Shannon Osaka, a climate reporter for The Washington Post. Osaka wrote about extreme weather events linked to climate change, the consequences for slow-moving climate policy and Earth’s temperatures rapidly rising past a critical threshold for sustainable life.“We don’t know where those tipping points are: They could be at 1.6 degrees [Celsius]; they could be at 2.5 degrees Celsius. It’s like a sort of terrifying dice roll.”To hear the full conversation, click play on the audio player above or subscribe to the Climate Cast podcast.

Craft beer grew in popularity over the past decade across Minnesota, but the brewing process has also created a ton of wastewater. Now, there’s an experiment to make the process carbon neutral. University of Minnesota professor Paige Novak and Fulton Brewing are working on a new, sustainable way to treat wastewater from the brewing process.She spoke to MPR chief meteorologist Paul Huttner for Climate Cast.The transcript below has been lightly edited for clarity and length.Tell us about the craft brewing process and how it contributes to carbon emissions.When beer is brewed, a whole lot of extra wastewater is produced. For every pint of beer that’s made, there's usually four to 10 pints of wastewater that’s generated at the same time. This wastewater tends to go to a centralized treatment facility where it’s treated, then cleaned up and discharged to a river. What happens during that wastewater cleanup process is that a lot of energy is used to pump air into the water, bacteria eat up all the waste, and all that pumping of the air creates a huge energy requirement, and also produces CO2. It can take up to 15 to 30 percent of a city’s total energy bill to process wastewater, and that can add up to about 2 billion gallons annually. Is that right? It’s a huge amount of energy that we use to clean our wastewater. If you look nationally, the amount of electricity that we use nationally just for wastewater is about 2 percent. So you think about everything that we do in terms of driving, heating our homes, lighting things, and 2 percent of that is used for our wastewater. It’s a huge amount. Tell us about your project with Fulton Brewing. I work in biological wastewater treatment systems. I look at bacteria that can help clean up pollutants, including wastewater pollutants. What we’ve done is develop a system where we can put bacteria into little pellets. We can add these pellets to a tank. The bacteria are active, so we can put a lot of bacteria in there and keep them in the tank and they degrade all the wastewater. And if you do it at the site before the wastewater is diluted, you can treat the wastewater differently and actually generate methane gas, which can be used as an energy source onsite. In addition to using a lot of water, breweries use energy to heat the material to make the beer — also to heat the brewery in the winter. So you get added energy creation at the brewery, and then you save energy for treatment when you go to the wastewater treatment plant. Has Fulton Brewing been receptive to your research? They have been wonderful partners. They’ve been working with us on this process for years now. We did an initial pilot study at their brewery a few years ago, and that was really helpful to see what didn’t work. And then we were able to get additional funding from the Department of Energy to continue to work on this process. We just finished up a second pilot study at Fulton where we were able to show that the system worked amazingly well.What else should people know about beer and carbon neutrality?I think we, just as consumers, need to keep in mind that there’s all this additional work that needs to be done to keep these processes that supply us with the food and beverages going. So think about supporting clean water use, supporting treatment, and supporting research as you go along your day using these products.To hear the full conversation, click play on the audio player above or subscribe to the Climate Cast podcast.

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.”To hear the full conversation, click play on the audio player above or subscribe to the Climate Cast podcast.

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. To hear the full conversation, click play on the audio player above or subscribe to the Climate Cast podcast.

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.To hear the conversation, click play on the audio player above or subscribe to the Climate Cast podcast.

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.What prompted you to write this book? 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. You talk about being a citizen scientist in your book. What does that mean to you? 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. What do you think about the progress we’ve made on climate solutions so far? 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. What message do you have for anyone who wants to bring their life more in tune with our planet and our climate? 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. To hear the conversation, click play on the audio player above or subscribe to the Climate Cast podcast.

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.”To hear the full conversation, click play on the audio player above or subscribe to the Climate Cast podcast