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Studies show global warming is affecting the world’s largest freshwater lake, Lake Baykal

Posted by: Maven on May 1, 2008 at 5:30 am

From the National Science Foundation, this press release:

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. 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.

To read the full text of this story from the National Science Foundation, click here.

Picture of Lake Baykal by National Science Foundation and Nicholas Rodenhouse.

May 1, 2008 · Filed Under Climate change & water supply

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