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One-Degree Rise In Temperature Causes Ripple Effect In World's Largest High Arctic Lake (folio.ca)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from FOLIO Magazine: A 1 C increase in temperature has set off a chain of events disrupting the entire ecology of the world's largest High Arctic lake. "The amount of glacial meltwater going into the lake has dramatically increased," said Martin Sharp, a University of Alberta glaciologist who was part of a team of scientists that documented the rapid changes in Lake Hazen on Ellesmere Island over a series of warm summers in the last decade. "Because it's glacial meltwater, the amount of fine sediment going into the lake has dramatically increased as well. That in turn affects how much light can get into the water column, which may affect biological productivity in the lake." The changes resulted in algal blooms and detrimental changes to the Arctic char fish population, and point to a near certain future of summer ice-free conditions. The findings document an unprecedented shift from the previous three centuries, challenging scientists' expectations of how such a large system could respond so rapidly to a one-degree rise. The study has been published in the journal Nature Communications.

9 of 303 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Ice free conditions? by Gojira+Shipi-Taro · · Score: 2, Informative

    I would hardly refer to some pundit on youtube who talks about "fake news" as a purveyor of "actual facts". "Alternative facts" (lies) perhaps.

    --
    "Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
  2. Re:The world is not a static system by js290 · · Score: 1, Informative

    Imagine if the Sun's output is also not static or constant...

    --
    "Tempers are wearing thin. Let's just hope some robot doesn't kill everybody." --Bender
  3. Re:Why does onw degreee makes such a difference? by serviscope_minor · · Score: 2, Informative

    Ah I see you're using the "I don't understand it therefore it's wrong" line of reasoning. I like how you've been modded up for that. Way to go slashdot.

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    SJW n. One who posts facts.
  4. Re:Why does onw degreee makes such a difference? by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 5, Informative

    In my country the temperature varies from -30 C in winter, and +30 C in summer. If the themperatures chang in the future to -29 C in winter, and +31 C in summer. Why should this change the climate so much as it is claimed, when there is already a 60 C change year around?? I call BS on the climatechange.

    This lake is almost always covered in ice year round and, from 2007 to 2012 had a mean summer temperatures of -4.9C. The increase in temperature is warming and melting the surrounding permafrost, which drains into the lake, raising both its level and temperature ... This affects the algae and fish in the lake, which affects the people that fish the lake -- as well as everything downstream.

    From: Lake Hazen

    Although air temperatures in this area often rise above 10C in July and August, Lake Hazen remains ice covered in most years.

    From the actual study in Nature The world’s largest High Arctic lake responds rapidly to climate warming. (linked in the TFA):

    A decrease in seasonal ice cover resulted in warming of surface waters and, more importantly, allowed planktonic algae to fill a niche which was previously climatically inaccessible, re-organizing the ecology of the lake at the base of the foodweb.

    Collectively, rising air temperatures, increasing glacial melt and runoff, decreasing summer lake ice cover, shifts in primary producer communities and declining fish condition demonstrate the coupling between watershed changes and in-lake conditions and processes.

    This vast, deep lake, the High Arctic’s largest freshwater ecosystem, has experienced drastic changes in the last decade, despite its volume, thermal inertia and hypothesized resilience to climate change.

    Such changes, and their consequences, are certain to increase further as warming of northern latitudes continues into the future, undoubtedly jeopardizing the security of traditional freshwater foods and other ecosystem services for northern Indigenous peoples throughout the Arctic.

    --
    It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
  5. Re:You do realize it was going to change anyway? by serviscope_minor · · Score: 5, Informative

    Yeah we all know that the climate has changed before. This is not news to anyone. But when people say the temperature has changed before, this is what they mean:

    https://xkcd.com/1732/

    --
    SJW n. One who posts facts.
  6. Re:The world is not a static system by js290 · · Score: 1, Informative

    So your theory is that changes in the Sun's output are causing the recent rise in temperature?

    1. What happened to the warming that should have occurred (and was predicted to occur) due to increases in greenhouse gases?

    2. Where is the observational data to evidence your theory?

    1) Is rise in greenhouse gases the cause or effect? 2) The Earth's climate is mathematically coupled to the output of the Sun. You should be asking for models that accurately predict the output of the Sun.

    --
    "Tempers are wearing thin. Let's just hope some robot doesn't kill everybody." --Bender
  7. Re:You do realize it was going to change anyway? by hey! · · Score: 4, Informative

    Yes, we do realize that. It's not the magnitude of change per se that's the problem, it's the rate of change.

    Hitting +2C above pre-industrial levels by the end of this century represents warming 10x more rapid than anything we see geological record since the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event. You are absolutely correct that local ecological disruptions are constantly wiping out individual populations, but with globally distributed rapid changes we'll see (indeed are seeing) widespread extinctions of entire species and shifts toward weedier species.

    Now people adapt more rapidly than plants and animals, so climate change is not anything like an extinction event for our species. But at that rate we're going to see differential effects depending between populations. People whose income comes primarily from financial investments will actually do well out of that level of climate change; all they need to do is rebalance their portfolios annually. People whose livelihood is tied to a specific geographic area will find adaptation difficult or impossible, producing refugees and political crises.

    And that's with just a 2C increase, which presumes vigorous action on our part. Without action, a +4C scenario is increasingly plausible. Again, that's not an extinction event for our species, but it won't be nice for most of us.

    --
    Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
  8. Re: The world is not a static system by riverat1 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Climate model projections compare well with observations. Here's the latest comparisons:

    Climate model projections compared to observations

  9. Re:The world is not a static system by riverat1 · · Score: 5, Informative

    The sun has been monitored pretty well for about 400 years. Recently it's been monitored rigorously since the 1950s and continuously from satellites since 1979. In all that time it's never shown enough variation to account for the current warming. You may want it to be the sun but the evidence shows that it isn't.