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‘Fingerprints of a warming world’ evident in Minnesota climate trends

A landslide of soil on a hillside beneath a highway
After three years of drought, Minnesota saw its warmest winter and wettest meteorological spring on record.
Minnesota Department of Transportation

Minnesota’s climate continues to shift. The trend is toward warmer winters and more erratic precipitation patterns.

“What we see globally and what we see right in our own backyards are the fingerprints of a warming world,” Heidi Roop, the director of Minnesota’s Climate Adaptation Partnership, said.

She added that we should expect these extremes to continue.

“If we look out toward the end of the century, some of our future climate models show that our springtime precipitation could be as much as 40 percent wetter and our summers around 20 percent drier.”

She spoke more about Minnesota’s climate trends with MPR News Chief Meteorologist Paul Huttner.

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