Lake Superior Warming Up, and Shrinking

If anyone wanted more evidence of global warming, Lake Superior should be the right place to check.

Erie, Huron, Michigan, Ontario and Superior, in North America, on the Canada-United States border, together constitute the Great Lakes system and they hold nearly 20 per cent of the world's fresh surface water.

Scientists have found that Lake superior, the deepest and coldest of them all, is getting warmer and is perhaps shrinking too.

Superior's surface area is roughly the same as South Carolina's, the biggest of any freshwater lake on Earth. It's deep enough to hold all the other Great Lakes plus three additional Lake Eries.

Yet over the past year, its level has ebbed to the lowest point in eight decades and will set a record this fall if, as expected, it dips 7.6 more centimetres.

Its average temperature has surged about 4.5 degrees Farenheit since 1979, significantly above the 2.7-degree rise in the region's air temperature during the same period. That's no small deal for a freshwater sea that was created from glacial melt as the Ice Age ended and remains chilly in all seasons, it is pointed out.

A weather buoy on the western side recently recorded an ``amazing" 24 degrees Celsius, "as warm a surface temperature as we've ever seen in this lake," says Jay Austin, assistant professor at the University of Minnesota at Duluth's Large Lakes Observatory.

Water levels also have receded on the other Great Lakes since the late 1990s. But the suddenness and severity of Superior's changes worry many in the region; it has plunged more than 30 centimetres in the past year. Shorelines are dozens of metres wider than usual, giving sunbathers wider beaches but also exposing mucky bottomlands and rotting vegetation.

"C'mon, girls, get out of the mud," Dan Arsenault, 32, calls to his two young daughters at a park near the mouth of the St. Marys River on the southeastern end of Lake Superior. Bree, five, and three-year-old Andie are stomping in puddles where water was waist-deep a couple of years ago. The floatation rope that previously designated the swimming area now rests on moist ground.

"This is the lowest I've ever seen it," says Arsenault, a lifelong resident of Sault Ste. Marie in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

Superior still has lots of water. Its average depth is 147 metres and it reaches 406 metres at the deepest point. Erie, the shallowest Great Lake, is 64 metres at its deepest and averages only 19 metres. Lake Michigan averages 85 metres and is 281 metres at its deepest.

Yet along Superior's shores, boats can't reach many mooring sites and marina operators are begging the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to dredge shallow harbors. Ferry service between Grand Portage, Minnesota, and Isle Royale National Park was scaled back because one of the company's boats couldn't dock.

Sally Zabelka has turned away boaters from Chippewa Landing marina in the eastern Upper Peninsula, where not long ago 8.2-metre vessels easily made their way up the channel from the lake's Brimley Bay. "In essence, our dock is useless this year," she says.

Another worry: As the bay heats up, the perch, walleye and smallmouth bass that have lured anglers to her campground and tackle shop are migrating to cooler waters in the open lake.

Low water has cost the shipping industry millions of dollars. Vessels are carrying lighter loads of iron ore and coal to avoid running aground in shallow channels.

Superior's retreat creates a double whammy in Grand Marais, where the only deepwater harbour of refuge along a 145-kilometres, shipwreck-strewn section of the lake already was filling with sand because of a decaying breakwall.

Burt Township, the local government, is extending the harbour's boat launching ramp an additional 12 metres, Supervisor Jack Hubbard says. Sand and shallow water are choking off aquatic vegetation that once provided habitat for hefty pike and trout.

Water evaporation rates are up sharply because mild winters have shrunk the winter ice cap – just as climate change computer models predict for the next half-century.

Cynthia Sellinger, a deputy director with the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory in Ann Arbor, suspects residual effects of El Nino, the warming of equatorial Pacific waters that produced warmer winters in the late 1990s, just as the lakes began receding.

Both long-term climate change and short-term meteorological factors may be driving water levels down, feels Michigan Tech University chemist Noel Urban. World may Get Much Wetter With Global Warming Than Believed

Source-Medindia
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