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.
For Sea Grant, resilience is more than a buzzword. Sea Grant is involved in every aspect of climate resilience planning, from start to finish.
In late February, as the Southern Plains and Gulf Coast suffered through an unusually strong blast of wintry weather, weather talk turned to the polar vortex and the possibility that the extreme cold was yet another example of weather-gone-wild due to global warming.
As the planet warms, scientists expect that mountain snowpack should melt progressively earlier in the year - but that melt isn't evenly distribted from location to location.
The answer is important for understanding how the Earth system is responding to climate change.
New analyses of global air measurements show that five years after an unexpected spike in emissions of the banned ozone-depleting chemical chlorofluorocarbon CFC-11, they dropped sharply between 2018 and 2019.
New research indicates that man-made clouds formed along shipping routes dissipate too quickly to provide insight into the cooling effect of naturally occuring marine clouds.
Known for precipitating outbreaks of Arctic air, stratospheric events in polar regions often cause other kinds of extreme weather. Since the stratosphere takes a long time to recover after these events, scientists may be able to improve predictability of extreme weather weeks ahead of time.
NOAA scientists project the maximum Great Lakes ice cover for 2021 will be 30 percent, higher than last year’s maximum of 19.5 percent, but part of a long-term pattern of declining ice cover likely driven by climate change.
Results from a 2016 research cruise show ocean acidification has interfered with shell development of zooplankton that are a critical part of the marine food web.