Our Winter Weather Future: Understanding, Preparing For, and Navigating Winter In the Midst of Climate Change

The University of Minnesota Climate Adaptation Partnership (MCAP) shared information about what our future winters might look like, drawing from their MN CliMAT tool, and highlighting local efforts of how communities are already adapting to climate change. This talk explored climate change in the Midwest to help answer the questions "How will climate change impact our winters?” “What does this mean for our ecosystems and communities?” and “How can we prepare?"

Our Winter Weather Future
The Great Northern Climate Solutions Series

Resources for further learning:

  • Use the Minnesota Climate Mapping and Analysis Tool (MN CliMAT): MN CliMAT is an interactive online tool that provides highly localized future climate projections for Minnesota. You can view climate projections down to the 4km/2.5mile scale across the state, visualizing how even specific towns will likely be impacted in the coming decades.

  • Read The Climate Action Handbook: A Visual Guide to 100 Climate Solutions for Everyone by Dr. Heidi Roop: The Climate Action Handbook explains why we need to take action now to combat climate change and offers 100 varied and doable solutions. A visually stunning guide, it does what no other climate change book manages to do: it's approachable, digestible, and offers the average person ideas, options, and a roadmap for action. It also offers hope—often overlooked in climate change conversations. Climate actions can create near-instantaneous improvements in air quality and can offer ways to address societal inequities, green our communities, save money, and build local economies. 

  • Get Involved with the Community Climate Leaders Program: The Community Climate Leaders program offers group-based online and in-person instruction on how climate change is affecting our communities, actions you can take now to make a difference including how to use your passions, strengths, and motivations to fuel climate action, leadership and collective action at the community scale, and climate justice to build a just future for all. 

Take Action!

  • Support energy efficient and carbon neutral snowmaking technology; volunteer for restoration projects (e.g., tree planting, wetland restoration, stream bank stabilization).

  • Find something that aligns with your passion, strengths, and motivations for doing climate work - and do it. You don't need to do everything, and you don't need to be perfect. You just have to try, and keep going. 

About the Panelists

  • Amanda Farris is an Associate Director for the University of Minnesota Climate Adaptation Partnership (MCAP). In this role she helps to coordinate the MCAP program and several ongoing grants, collaborates with regional partners, translates climate data and information to support decision-making, and builds networks of climate adaptation practitioners. Prior to joining the MCAP team, Amanda worked with the Carolinas Integrated Sciences & Assessments (CISA), an applied climate research team at the University of South Carolina Department of Geography.

  • Ariane Laxo is Director of Sustainability at HGA, a national interdisciplinary architecture and engineering firm working with public, private, non-profit, and higher education clients to advance decarbonization, resilience, and healthy communities through the built environment.

    Over the last decade, she has organized industry leaders and collaborated with climate scientists to understand how climate projection models can be downscaled and used to inform architecture and engineering workflows. Aiming to fill the climate adaptation gap in architecture/ engineering/ construction industry building codes, design process, and standard of care, Ariane is working with the University of Minnesota Climate Adaptation Partnership and the Center for Sustainable Building Research in a collaborative research project to create data tools, education, and design workflows that bridge climate projection models across the last mile to data end users and climate services providers in the architecture, engineering, and construction industry.

    In her work as Director of Sustainability, she works on projects of all scales, coordinating with multiple disciplines, owners/operators, and contractors to execute high performance goals that balance climate change mitigation and adaptation. An expert facilitator and project manager, she distills complex issues into tangible workplans and original outcomes, tackling some of the greatest challenges of our time.

  • Christy is the Curriculum Manager of the University of Minnesota’s Climate Adaptation Partnership. Previously, Christy built and managed educational programs for the University of Minnesota Master Gardener Program, including the Horticulture Core Course training and Climate-Ready Gardens course. She is looking forward to using her experience and expertise to support the work of her MCAP colleagues and build new programs for climate adaptation. Originally from California, Christy earned a Bachelors of Science in Human Development and a Masters of Science in Horticulture and Agronomy with a focus on horticulture application from the University of California, Davis.

  • Ben Schierer served two terms as mayor of Fergus Falls, MN, first elected in 2016. He currently serves as Director of Civic Partnerships at West Central Initiative. Alongside his wife, Tessa, he built and operated two successful restaurants in downtown Fergus Falls between 2015 and 2023. He was selected as a 2020 Bush Fellow, a 2021 NewDEAL Leader, and a 2023 Presidential Leadership Scholar. He received his MPA from the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey School of Public Affairs. He and his wife live in Fergus Falls with their five children.

  • Dr. Xinyi Qian has been the director of the University of Minnesota Tourism Center since December 2021. She was the interim director from January to November 2021 and tourism specialist from June 2013 to December 2020. As the director, Dr. Qian oversees the Center's strategic directions, manages the Center's operation, actively engages the advisory committee, builds and maintains relationships with strategic partners and industry sectors, works with development officers to ensure the Center's fiscal sustainability, interacts with faculty affiliates, and oversees the Center's communications, media, and social media strategies and work.