Lake Michigan is warming hundreds of feet below the surface, study shows
Updated 2:57 PM; Today 2:57 PM
March 22, 2021
By Tribune News Service
CHICAGO — Climate change is reaching all the way down to the depths of one of Earth’s largest lakes.
Water hundreds of feet below the surface of Lake Michigan is warming, especially in winter, according to a report published last week by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The warming could change the seasonal patterns of the lake — and alter a way of life for ecosystems and industry alike.
... These changes may seem very small, a couple of tenths of a degree per decade, but this has been going on for several decades now, perhaps longer than is reflected in our monitoring,” said Craig Stow, a NOAA Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory scientist and author of the study.
...Lake Michigan is dimictic, meaning there’s a top-to-bottom mix of the water column twice a year. With warmer surface temperatures, the fall mixing cycle is starting later, leading to a shortened cooling period for deep waters and a longer summer period without mixing... “The organisms that live there, the plankton and the fish, are used to the lake the way it was,” Stow said. “They evolved over thousands of years to take advantage of those systems that mixed twice a year.”
More here
https://www.pennlive.com/news/2021/03/lake-michigan-is-warming-hundreds-of-feet-below-the-surface-study-shows.html
