Posted on 05/01/2008 11:00:38 AM PDT by blam
Global Warming Affects World's Largest Freshwater Lake
This well-known landmark, Shaman Rock on Lake Baikal in Russia, stands guard over an ancient lake whose pristine condition is changing quickly. (Credit: Nicholas Rodenhouse)
ScienceDaily (May 1, 2008) — Russian and American scientists have discovered that the rising temperature of the world's largest lake, located in frigid Siberia, shows that this region is responding strongly to global warming.
Consensus of scientists regarding global warming Drawing on 60 years of long-term studies of Russia's Lake Baikal, Stephanie Hampton, an ecologist and deputy director of the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) in Santa Barbara, Calif., and Marianne Moore, a biologist at Wellesley College in Wellesley, Mass., along with four other scientists, report their results on-line today in the journal Global Change Biology.
"Warming of this isolated but enormous lake is a clear signal that climate change has affected even the most remote corners of our planet," Hampton said.
In their paper, the scientists detail the effects of climate change on Lake Baikal--from warming of its vast waters to reorganization of its microscopic food web.
"The conclusions shown here for this enormous body of freshwater result from careful and repeated sampling over six decades," said Henry Gholz, program director for NCEAS at the National Science Foundation (NSF), which funded the research. "Thanks to the dedication of local scientists, who were also keen observers, coupled with modern synthetic approaches, we can now visualize and appreciate the far-reaching changes occurring in this lake."
Lake Baikal is the grand dame of lakes. In 1996, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) declared it a World Heritage site because of its biological diversity. It boasts 2500 plant and animal species, with most, including the freshwater seal, found nowhere else in the world.
The lake contains 20 percent of the world's freshwater, and it is large enough to hold all the water in the United States' Great Lakes. It is the world's deepest lake as well as its oldest; at 25 million years old, it predates the emergence of humans.
In more recent times, it was a dedicated group of humans who made this study possible. "Our research relies on a 60-year data set, collected in Lake Baikal by three generations of a single family of Siberian scientists," Moore said. "In the 1940s, Mikhail Kozhov began collecting and analyzing water samples in anticipation that this lake could reveal much about how lakes in general function.
"Ultimately, his daughter Olga Kozhova continued the program, followed by her daughter, who is also a co-author of today's paper: Lyubov Izmest'eva."
The decades-long research effort survived the reign of Stalin, the fall of the Soviet Union, and other social and financial upheavals in the region.
Data collection continued through every season, in an environment where winter temperatures drop to -50 degrees F.
The data on Lake Baikal reveal "significant warming of surface waters and long-term changes in the food web of the world's largest, most ancient lake," write the researchers in their paper. "Increases in water temperature (1.21°C since 1946), chlorophyll a (300 percent since 1979), and an influential group of zooplankton grazers (335 percent since 1946) have important implications for nutrient cycling and food web dynamics."
The scientists conclude that the lake now joins other large lakes, including Superior, Tanganyika and Tahoe, in showing warming trends.
"But," they note, "temperature changes in Lake Baikal are particularly significant as a signal of long-term regional warming.
"This lake was expected to be among those most resistant to climate change, due to its tremendous volume and unique water circulation."
The research paper is the result of a collaboration involving six Siberian and American scientists, who were assisted by student translators from Wellesley College.
In addition to Hampton and Moore, the paper's contributors are Izmest'eva, director of the Scientific Research Institute of Biology, Irkutsk State University, Irkutsk, Russia; Stephen L. Katz, recently of the Northwest Fisheries Science Center, NOAA Fisheries, Seattle, Wash.; Brian Dennis of the departments of statistics and fish and wildlife resources, University of Idaho, Moscow, Idaho; and Eugene A. Silow of the Scientific Research Institute of Biology, Irkutsk State University, Irkutsk, Russia.
Adapted from materials provided by National Science Foundation.
Intersting...it’s CLIMATE change yet, an ecologist and biologist play climatologist according to their finds in a freshwater lake (alluviologist?).
Now...how can you deny a ^consensus^ among scientists.
Not long ago, there was an article about how a solar expert (can’t recall the -ologist name) just outright b1tc4-slapped a bunch of nanny-staters in Scandinavia about climate change.
I propose that every time we see “scientific consensus” from now on, we DAMAND to see the “smoking gun”. After all, there was a “consensus” that Iraq was developing WMD, even Blixie said it was true, but everyone demanded that the “smoking gun” be found before military festivities could begin. Let’s start giving the left a taste of their own medicine.
Scientists ought to get together every once in while to compare notes.
Global warming on hold
Aral Sea:
The lake has only one major inlet and one major outlet to carry most of its water. The inlet is the heavily-polluted Selenga River which flows in from northern Mongolia. It brings in almost one-half of Baikal's water.
or this:
Lake Baikal resides on one of the two deepest land depressions on Earth. (The other is the Marianas Trench in the Pacific.) The rift is over nine kilometers in depth. Little is understood about this huge fault zone. Hydrothermic vents below the surface cause heavy tectonic activity, with the result of minor earthquakes every few hours. Three large plates meet in this rift, which seven-kilometer-deep sediment shows to be more than 25 million years old.
or this:
Plans for the paper mill at Baikalsk began in 1954. The public was informed in 1957; protests were held, and ignored. The plant was built on the belief that heating Baikal's mineral-free waters, then spraying them over the pulp of the Siberian pines, would produce a "super" cellulose that could be used to make durable jet tires for Soviet Air Force planes. This was done during the Cold War under Nikita Khrushchev on the intelligence report that the U.S. was using the same procedure in Foley, Florida.(4) (In time, synthetics were found to be more conducive to tire manufacture.) The plant, however, continues to produce, polluting 200 square kilometers of the lake. This pollution affects the bottom-dwellers of the lake as well, for Lake Baikal's waters are thoroughly mixed, with oxygen found even at the lowest depths. In addition, the Angara carries some of this pollution westward.
It must be global warming. There can be no other possible explanation for the rise in temperature.
It’s true, but global temperature DROPS are on the censored list given to the media periodically buy their comrade overseers.
noteice the body of water top right, has not shrunk at all...
I’d like to know the error bars on that temperature increse figure.
“Increases in water temperature (1.21°C since 1946), chlorophyll a (300 percent since 1979), and an influential group of zooplankton grazers (335 percent since 1946) have important implications for nutrient cycling and food web dynamics.”
1) Hmm, more fish food. GLOBAL WARMING IS GOOD FOR PLANT AND ANIMAL LIFE!
2) Most of the warming has been in northern land masses, ie Siberia. Is it surprising that this siberian lake is 1.2C warmer than 60 years ago??
3) All they’ve done is confirm that the lake follows local climate trends. Is the halt in global warming since 1998 relfected too?
yeah, considering this is supposed to be a scientific publication, you would think they would mention that Lake Baikal lies on a diverging plate boundry, the Baikal Rift Zone, and explain how it rests on very thin crust with magma underneath and geothermal activity in and around the lake.
The really scary part is, in this lake’s 25 million year history, this is the first time it’s temperature has changed at all. Which means, of course, that we are all going to die.
If Siberia is warming up, I would see that as a good thing.
But if they want to worry about it, thats fine with me. It s glass half full, glass half empty thing. Longer growing seasons may look bad to some people. Its inexplicable to me how, but I recognize that it is so.
reorganization of its microscopic food web
far-reaching changes
long-term changes in the food web
important implications for nutrient cycling and food web dynamics
I read it a couple times and I can't find where they say any of these is a bad thing. Change can arguably be good as often as bad. I would think any place that can experience -50F can only benefit by warming a few tenths of a degree.
But what a revelation that is.... along with the sky is blue, snow is cold, rain is wet and the sun is bright.
You forgot "Poor and minorities affected most"
The Best Global Warming Videos on the Internet |
I like your angle, but I think the scientists would be blaming man for the 0.001% decrease in "atmospheric brightness" in that one second. After all, man was spewing CO2 and soot into the atmosphere at the same time, so he HAS to be the cause.
And largest by depth: http://www.magicbaikal.com/baikal.php
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