Lake Michigan's Future of Highs and Lows

Looking out over Lake Michigan feels as though I’m gazing out into a vast ocean basin. Layers of 5 foot turbulent waves crash against the coastline, and as I look towards the center of the lake, the water continues endlessly, merging into a hazy blue as it meets the sky along the horizon. Growing up in Chicago and spending almost all of my summers in Harbert, Michigan, Lake Michigan was an essential part of my upbringing. I would spend summers swimming into the middle of the lake and free diving, running along the sandy shores of Michigan searching for rocks and sticks, diving into the lake along Chicago’s concrete beaches, and winters exploring the thick ice and boulders of snow in the winter.

In the past years, I’ve witnessed large changes to our lake – yet changes that are not typical compared to when we think about rising sea levels. Currently, outside of the city, many of its sprawling beaches are now only three feet long, with surrounding cliff sides heavily eroding and endangering coastal houses. In recent years in Chicago, the lake has flooded the city streets and buildings during its extreme highs. However, compared to levels 7 years ago, the lake was so low that water supplies and shipping businesses were threatened to the point where residents were worried the lakes were disappearing. Living through these extremes has been confusing and worrisome - for me and so many other residents of the lake.

In the past decade, Lake Michigan water level fluctuations have reached swings that are happening faster than any time in recorded history, according to Dan Eagan, author of “The Death and Life Of The Great Lakes.” He believes that the speed and uncertainty of these changes underscore how Chicago and other surrounding communities are potentially more immediately exposed to the dangers of climate change than communities residing along the ocean.

Lake Michigan is a part of one of the Earth’s largest freshwater systems, The Great Lakes, which comprises 84% of North America’s and 21% of the Earth’s surface freshwater – a staggering amount. Lake Michigan’s shoreline spans almost 1660 miles across Michigan, Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin connecting to Lake Huron towards the north near the Canadian border. More than 30 million people rely on the Great Lakes for drinking water, and the lake supplies $3.1 trillion in gross domestic product.

Along with this, the lake is home to and supports many important ecosystems, such as marshes, tallgrass prairies, sand dunes, forests, and savannas which all provide important habitat for wildlife – including trout, salmon, walleye, bass, crawfish, eel, and bird populations including hawks and bald eagles.

Without Lake Michigan, Chicago would not be the city it is today. Before it was built by settlers, the landscape was covered in swampy terrain that separated the Great Lakes and the Mississippi Water Basin. In the 19th century, the landscape resembled a muddy marsh, with pools of standing water that flooded the city. Between the 1830’s and 1900, the city installed a canal and sewers, raised city streets, and even reversed the Chicago river in order to allow for the freshwater resource to become more available to the rest of the country.

The assumption of many was likely that these engineering feats would maintain lake water levels for years to come, but that may not be our new reality.

Lake Michigan water levels naturally fluctuate in cycles, both on a seasonal and annual basis - with natural fluctuations swinging roughly every three to ten years, and peaks occurring in the late summer with lows during winter months. Over the past 150 years, institutions and scientists have been tracking average water levels, which are influenced by inputs from precipitation and snowmelt, and outputs of evaporation and water flowing into rivers and the ocean.

From 1987 until 1999, the lake level declined from a high water level to a level below the long-term mean in 1999 and remained very low until around 2013, where levels broke record low levels in recorded history. During this time, beaches were expansive and many worried that the Chicago River might reverse itself back into the Lake as levels dropped dramatically.

However, after this extreme low, the lake level increased rapidly, culminating in 2020 when the water level continually broke the monthly record high through January to August. At this time, water levels began to flood houses in Chicago, beaches began to close down, and in neighboring lake counties, beaches fully disappeared. Compared these record highs to the record breaking low levels in 2013 — the shift was both faster than the usual decadal fluctuation as well as extreme on both ends.

As climate change continues to impact the very systems that contribute to fluctuating lake levels - rain, snow, and evaporation - the lake’s high-water cycles are threatening to have higher highs and lower lows and the transitions between the two will occur more rapidly. Since 1990, the Great Lakes Basin has received far more precipitation than average, with the past five years being the wettest five years on record. At the same time, the region has also experienced an average air temperature increase of 1.2 degrees since 1991 - creating wetter weather, and a higher lake level. However, warmer weather also means less capacity for the lake to form ice cover in the winter, leading to increased evaporation and decreasing lake water levels.

Extreme storms, such as storms formed from the weakening of the Polar Vortex, which is thought to be tied to climate change, have led to dramatic increases in water levels. The regional Polar Vortex that began in 2014 helped to slow evaporation and lower temperatures, driving the lake levels to peak in 2020.

Trends are additionally showing increases in wave height, with record breaking 21 foot waves occurring in the past decade. Wave height is also significantly influenced by reduced ice cover as well as the presence of more extreme storms.

As our climate continues to change over the next decades, scientists agree that we will likely see more of these extreme changes to the lake. We can expect heat waves but also intense cold, droughts but also heavy rains, which will all contribute to extreme water level fluctuations in the lake. It’s important for individuals to understand this, as many believe that climate change will only cause rising water levels - Lake Michigan faces a double edge sword when it comes to the impacts of climate change.

Another issue resulting from the increase in storms, waves, and water level is the erosion of Lake Michigan’s sea shores, an issue that is largely impacting smaller communities that reside on the lake. This is especially an issue given the increased property development along Lake Michigan’s shoreline. Historically, these shorelines acted as a buffer, but now with increased development, houses and infrastructure built up against the lake are collapsing. In Harbert County, where my family has had a house since 2007, the county has been rebuilding eroded shorelines and closing down beaches to cope with erosion and a shrinking beach. During 2020, many of the beaches were closed, and counties are increasingly having to create policies to stop shoreline build up.

For both Chicago and counties built around Lake Michigan, water level rise will pose an issue of building up infrastructure to prepare against lake water intrusion. It is estimated that cities and towns on the Great Lakes will face nearly 2 billion dollars in damages from climate change through 2025.

Chicago recently announced a plan to install hundreds of feet of barriers and breakwaters to protect lakefront locations vulnerable to flooding. The city is also making efforts to plant more trees and to capture rain and prevent it from flowing into the river, as well as making efforts to reduce its carbon footprint.

Communities in Western Michigan are additionally reinforcing breakwater areas and adding seawalls or protective rock layers and sandbags along the coast to prevent flooding. There is also a current project going on led by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Illinois Department of Natural Resources to install a series of offshore “reefs” and breakwalls made up of limestone blocks, tree roots, sand and cobblestones, to restore the shoreline and improve aquatic habitat for wildlife.

In a future where our climate will become increasingly fluctuating and extreme, it’s important for cities and towns to properly prepare for and mitigate the risks of climate change. For Chicago and counties living along the lake, it’s important for governments to understand that spending money on mitigation strategies will be pertinent towards future damages to the communities economy and infrastructure, especially in communities that are more vulnerable to rising levels or water shortages.

As someone from Lake Michigan, I’ve noticed a general lack of awareness in how the rest of the country perceives the risk that these changing water levels pose for communities that rely on The Great Lakes. Though many across the country may think that the midwest is least at risk of climate change, Lake Michigan’s water levels are just another sign that all parts of our country have and will face climate change in unique and equally damaging ways.