The dangers of warming winter lakes

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“You're listening to Shortwave. From NPR.”

Hey Shortwaveers, Emily Quang here, quick reminder Shortwave comes out four days a week,

Monday through Wednesday and Friday. So to make sure you never miss an episode, look for the

follow button on your podcast app and give it a little boop. Thank you kindly. All right, now it's my great pleasure to welcome Shortwave producer Burley McCoy. Hey Burley. Hey Emily. So as you know, winter is my damn. I fish all winter on a frozen lake in northwest Montana where I live. Yes, you are our resident shortwave ice queen. Thank you. And I'm not the only one who takes ice seriously. Almost every year since 2011, a huge lake in Madison, Wisconsin has frozen over enough

to support an entire festival. It's called Frozen Assets. And that's where I headed to report the story. Ooh, this sounds fun. What happens at Frozen Assets? So on and near the ice of Lake

“Mendoza, there is ice hockey, curling ice skating. People are flying. These giant colorful”

kites on the ice. A skydiver is landing on the ice right now. That's incredible. And they did

this warm up for a 5k where more than 1,000 people jumped up and down on the ice to make it shake. What? Why would you do that? I don't know. I did not like it. This lake is over 14 inches, so it's safe. Look at it shaped. So this is James Ty, the executive director and founder of Clean Lakes Alliance, which puts on the festival. But Emily, this lake, which freezes every year, this year with ice, they can have that it could have held an entire fleet of trucks.

Might one day not freeze it all. And thousands of others may stop too, like soon. I could foresee in my lifetime certainly on winter when Mendoza doesn't freeze. Today on the show, how changing lake ice is altering culture, community and safety on the ice.

“Plus, I go out with Madison's lake rescue team to see how they train for emergencies when someone”

falls through. You're listening to shortwave, the science podcast from NPR. This message comes from the BBC with its new podcast The Interface. Every Thursday, three leading tech journalists explore how tech is rewiring your week and your world. Listen to the interface on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. This message comes from Ted Health from Smart Daily Habits to new medical breakthroughs find reliable information you won't

hear anywhere else on Ted Health. This month, tune into a special series featuring guests on the science of raising kids. Listen to Ted Health wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Anita Rao, host of Embodied. Your source for intimate conversations about sex, relationships and health. Join me to meet people who will change the way you think about everything from disability to dating. And who will take you into their own lived experiences

of how things like being a truck driver or dealing with chronic insomnia, shape their identity and relationships. Subscribe to the Embodied podcast from WUNC, part of the NPR network. All right, Burley. So we are talking about lake ice, which remind me, when is safe to walk on lake ice? Yeah, so I double check this with Hillary Dugin at the festival. She's a scientist who studies inland lakes. And she says it's safer a person to walk on ice when there is four

inches of black ice. Black ice is really strong. And it's what freezes in the lake water itself. So it's what's freezing downward. So black ice, which is called that because it's clear and appears black is strongest, but it's not the only type of ice. White ice is what's forming when you freeze snow or slush. And that white ice has a lot more air in it. Just weaker in general. Because of all the air, white ice scatters more light and isn't clear and it looks white.

It's less strong and so it's less safe. And unlike black ice, it's tricky to say how much white ice is safe to walk on because the amount of air in it can be variable and it's often mixed with black ice. Okay, so you went to this festival on a frozen lake with clearly enough black ice for you to stand on. And it sounds true the spirit of northern communities. I mean, celebrating winter and making it a part of the culture there. Absolutely. That's very true in

Madison. And many places downtown people can always see one of the two lakes surrounding the city.

It's just part of everyday life there. And a lot of people take advantage of that. In one of the lakes, there's this bay where in the winter dozens, if not hundreds of people are ice fishing every day.

we walked by people eating snow cones. It was 10 degrees outside. I spent some years in Maine

“and in Alaska and it reminds me of lacing up my skates on the weekend just to go out on the lake and”

have fun. So it also reminds me of how nervous I was every time to step on it. I could not imagine going out to a whole festival on a lake. That's a lot of weight on that body of water. Though at Lake Mendoza, it's not every year anymore. Oh, Hillary told me that Lake Mendoza does freeze over every year. There's even a contest where people guess what day that will happen. But two years ago, the ice didn't form thick enough in time for the festival. So the festival on the ice

was canceled. It was sort of moved to the shore, which is really unfortunate. It was still fun. You know, we still had a lot of the same things, but you know, takes away the spirit of what this festival's about. That's the same time better for people to be on solid ground, you know. Yeah, and that made me wonder about safety on lake ice and how it might be changing. So I went to another expert. I'll let him introduce himself. Justin Tuz, I'm a firefighter down at

station one, Madison Wisconsin Fire Department. Justin is part of the lake rescue team. A group of firefighters who, among other things, are professionally trained to dive and rescue people who have fallen through the ice. I joined them on one of their training exercise. That's nice. So we went to Lake Manona, which is also right in town, to a spot where river flows into the lake, which basically

means there's always open water in that area. Ooh, sounds like the perfect place for practicing

“rescues. If you're the Madison Wisconsin Fire Department. I think that's exactly the thought.”

So I put on this giant yellow immersion suit on a ghost. They call it Gumby suit, because you basically walk like the green claymation character Gumby if you try to move. I don't want size fits all so they might be able to move. On size fits all usually means so I follow a couple of firefighters also wearing these suits. On to the ice, including Justin, we walked parallel to the river at first and started moving toward it. We stepped over this huge

ice crack where you could see the water and they told me it's features like these. They can form from warmer water flowing into a lake or from natural ice expansions and contractions. These are the places weaker ice can exist and are often where people fall in. So we cleared the crack,

walked right to the edge of where the ice stops and the lake water starts. Justin got in first.

Yeah, whenever you're ready to try it, we can throw you in. I'm ready. All right. Hey, little burlies are going to go in. They didn't throw me in. I kind of got down on the ice then went in backwards off the edge. All right, so it's actually only like four feet here so you can't

“cut. You'll feel a little pressure on your legs. All right. Oh, this is nice. Yeah, if you want to leave back,”

I can hold onto you. You can kind of feel how it. Oh, it is. So it's super buoyant. Yeah. Yeah. Let me keep you warm. Actually, like the longer you're in it, the warmer you get. And I just float it there while holding onto the ice for a few minutes. Was it cold? No, I was in this suit that made it kind of comfortable. Oh, and I had the lake rescue team around so it wasn't scary or anything. It was pretty much the safest situation I could ever be in going into a frozen lake.

Ready to get rescued? Ready to get rescued. All right. So another team member brought over this bright yellow rescue sled and attached my arms into a thick blue route. Then he flagged the short team to start pulling on this ice anchored rope that was attached to this sled. You get her out, gentlemen. It was all pretty quick. Cool to hear how they practice. How often are they doing it in reality? Like how often are they rescuing people? Yeah, this year, not a lot

because the ice has been super thick, but that's not always the case. Last year was definitely

our busiest year just because of the mild winter. Justin said that's because there were multiple phrases and laws which led to a particular kind of ice shelf that's super dangerous. When there's solid ice and then there's water on top of it and then another ice formation forms on top of that water. So it looks like solid ice. But it's not solid ice at all and a person who was walking on the ice at night fell through. Gosh. It wasn't deep water, but the ice shelf made it so he couldn't

get out of the water. So he would he would have been gone if we wouldn't have been able to find them. Was he okay? So they got him out. They got him out and in drone footage from the rescue, you can see that the ice just keeps breaking up when the rescuers are trying to get to them. And when they all get pulled off the ice, like it just keeps breaking up because of this false ice shelf that Justin was talking about. And Justin said the person was probably in the water

for around 25 minutes trying to get out of the water before they call for help, but they were okay. I'm so glad to hear they were okay because it is incredibly dangerous. I mean falling into cold water can kill you in less than a minute. Many people die within just minutes from cold shock.

both people going through the ice and people drowning from ice breakthroughs are increasing globally

“as climate change drives up the average temperature. We've documented over 4,000 fatal”

drownings through ice. This is Sapna Sharma. She's a global change biologist at York University in Canada. The drowning she's talking about were from 1991 to 2017. And they happened across 10

countries. She says 50% of those drownings are related to air temperature. So basically what that

means is that half of those drownings can be explained by winter air temperatures such that and warmer winter is more people drown. When temperatures are hovering right around freezing and freezing, freezing, freezing, freezing, that leads to more of that weak white ice that we talked about earlier. And it's harder to tell just how safe the ice is. And not to mention riskier for people who can't judge whether it will fall through it or not. Right. Going out on the

ice. And another thing that makes ice safety trickier to predict is something Hillary calls winter weirding. Well, just have these really cold, polar vortex events followed by heat waves. And so

winter is no longer this duration of cold weather. It kind of bounces around all over the place.

So throughout the winter, Lake Ice is getting more unstable, less safe. Plus, ice is forming later and disappearing earlier. Depending upon the extent of greenhouse gas warming, you might expect 10 to 28 days less to ice cover by the end of the century. And at current greenhouse gas emission scenarios, we forecast about 5700 lakes. May permanently become ice-free within this century. Over 5,000 lakes permanently ice-free within the century. That is so many. It changes winter as we know it

in the north. I guess if there is an upside, it's that if they don't freeze over it, definitely

“reduces the chances of people falling through. But what does that stake for the environment?”

If all that ice is lost? Well, for starters, satinists says, "When you have less lake ice

cover, you have less ice fishing opportunities, recreational opportunities, it matters for winter ice roads." So many northern communities, especially for most communities, and many indigenous communities actually require the use of winter ice roads to access food, fuel, medical supplies, and even social connections in the winter. Yeah, ice is an invaluable resource actually in lot of places, and it is being threatened by climate change as is Lake Ice culture, which is less

tangible in some ways, but comes with a lot of sorrow. Yeah, I bet. It's like a way of life you practice, early. Yeah, and James Ty, the festival organizer who we met earlier, hopes that it's also a call to action for change. Once people care about something, then they're going to want to protect it. You know, things are changing, and if there's a year that you can't be on the ice, then people are going to start wonder why. And maybe they'll ask for a change.

Burleigh, thank you so much for bringing us this reporting on changing Lake Ice from your neck of the woods. You're welcome. Does he picture us of Burleigh? During the Lake Ice Rescue Training, or at that really cool festival, check out our show notes. Also, there's so much more reporting to come. We will have another episode on changing Lake Ice coming out next week. Also, follow us on the app. You are listening to, please, whether that's the NPR app or another one.

It really helps us out, and means you won't miss out on cool new episodes. This episode was produced by Hannah Chin. It was edited by our showrunner, Becker Ramirez, and fact check by Tyler Jones. Jimmy Keely was the audio engineer, and Emily Quang. Thank you for listening to "Short Wave," the science podcast from NPR. Hey, it's Tanya Mosley, co-host of Fresh Air. Don't miss my interview with Actor Kate Hudson.

We talk about her music career, motherhood, and of course her breakout role. Penny Lane Man shows some respect. You can find my interview on the Fresh Air podcast.

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