Northern Lakes Warming 6x faster

York University:

“Lakes in the Northern Hemisphere are warming six times faster since 1992 than any other time period in the last 100 years, research led by York University has found.

Lake Superior, the most northern of the Great Lakes which straddles the Canada/United States border, is one of the fastest warming lakes, losing more than two months of ice cover since ice conditions started being recorded in 1857. In Lake Suwa, in Japan, ice formed close to 26 days later per century since 1897 and is now only freezing twice every decade, while Grand Traverse Bay in Lake Michigan had one of the fastest ice-off trends, melting about 16 days earlier per century.

”We found that lakes are losing on average 17 days of ice cover per century. Alarmingly, what we found is that warming in the past 25 years, from 1992 to 2016, was six times faster than any other period in the last 100 years,” says Associate Professor Sapna Sharma of the Faculty of Science at York University, who led the study with Professor David Richardson at the State University of New York at New Paltz and climate scientist Iestyn Woolway, Ph.D., of the European Space Agency Climate Office, United Kingdom.”

More information: Sapna Sharma et al, Loss of Ice Cover, Shifting Phenology, and More Extreme Events in Northern Hemisphere Lakes, Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences (2021). DOI: 10.1029/2021JG006348

Eric Freedman: Isle Royale →

Great Lakes Echo:

“The newly designated Minong Traditional Cultural Property covers Isle Royale and its entire archipelago of 450-plus northern Lake Superior islands and surrounding waters. It reflects many legacies, especially the cultural history of the Grand Portage Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, or Ojibwe.

The listing “recognizes and celebrates the lasting relationship” between Native Americans and Isle Royale and other nearby islands, said Seth DePasqual, the cultural resource manager at Isle Royale National Park. The Grand Portage Ojibwe have used the islands for many centuries.

Isle Royale has been a national park since 1945. In 1976, Congress set aside 99 percent of the main island as wilderness.”

Jeff Gillies: Lake Superior's Big Wave→

Environmental Monitor:

“A pair of lonesome data buoys bobbing off Michigan’s storm-whipped Lake Superior shore were suddenly the stars of the state this fall when they captured the largest waves ever measured on the Great Lakes.

The buoys, near Granite Island and Munising, each recorded 28.8-foot significant wave heights during a storm that caused hundreds of thousands of dollars of damage along the coast. The record wave height exceeded the previous 27.6-foot record set by a Michigan Tech buoy near Houghton, Mich., in 2012. To give some perspective on the rarity of these types of events, waves at the record-capturing buoys only climbed above 12 feet four times throughout 2015 and 2016.”

John Myers: Protection of 13 miles of Lake Superior Shoreland→

Pioneer Press:

“The Nature Conservancy of Canada announced this week that it has acquired more than 13 miles of pristine Lake Superior shoreline in Ontario just across the Minnesota border on the way to Thunder Bay. The nonprofit conservation group said they paid $6.4 million in U.S. funds — from government, conservation groups and private contributions on both sides of the border — for the North Shore property.

The 2,500 acres of nearly undisturbed boreal forest is home to bald eagles, nesting peregrine falcons and rare Arctic and alpine plants. It also includes cliffs, cobble beaches and stretches of open bedrock. Included in the purchase is Big Trout Bay, the last undeveloped, privately owned bay on Lake Superior between Duluth and Thunder Bay. A U.S. owner had proposed to develop the property into 300 cabin lots which had been approved by the local township.”

Greg Seitz: Earth's Lakes→

MinnPost:

“Minnesota has about five percent of America’s lakewater right here, with a total volume of 66 cubic miles (not counting Lake Superior). That’s about twice as much as a typical state.

Our state’s most famous lake is surely Superior, the biggest freshwater lake in the world by surface area and, as it turns out, the largest volume of lakewater in the United States, and six percent of all the lake water in the world.

It’s so big that if you poured all the inland lakes in America into it, Superior wouldn’t even be half full. Its 2,900 cubic miles of water is more than in the other four Great Lakes combined, which contain another five percent of the world’s total lake water. They are truly great, and superior.”