Changes foreshadow impacts on lake ecosystems, fisheries.
Climate change is causing significant impacts on the Great Lakes and the surrounding region. As the largest surface freshwater system in the world, the Great Lakes have an enormous impact, seen and unseen, on the more than 34 million people who live within their collective basin. Because of their unique response to environmental conditions, Earth’s large lakes are considered by scientists as key sentinels of climate change.
A long-term study published in Nature Communications today from NOAA reveals a warming trend in deepwater temperatures that foreshadows profound ecological change on the horizon. While less visible than the loss in ice cover and increasing lake surface temperatures, this latest index of climate change adds to the growing evidence of climate change impacts in the region.
Using a 30-year dataset of deep water temperature measurements, NOAA Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory scientists investigated how Lake Michigan’s seasonal mixing patterns are being influenced by climate change. As it turns out, what’s happening on the lake’s surface during the summer is actually impacting the lake’s deep waters during the winter.
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Image via NOAA Research
