A groundbreaking study will enable scientists to better predict future warming of the world’s lakes due to climate change, and the potential threat to cold-water species such as salmon and trout.
A groundbreaking study will enable scientists to better predict future warming of the world’s lakes due to climate change, and the potential threat to cold-water species such as salmon and trout.
Pioneering research led by the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UKCEH) has devised the first system that classifies lakes globally, placing each of them in one of nine ‘thermal regions’ (see map below). Lakes are grouped depending on their seasonal patterns of surface water temperatures, with the coldest thermal region including lakes in Alaska, Canada, northern Russia and China, and the warmest covering lakes in equatorial South America, Africa, India and south-east Asia.
By incorporating climate change models, the scientists predict that by the year 2100, for the most extreme climate change scenario, average lake temperature will be around 4 degrees Celsius warmer and that 66 per cent of lakes globally will be classified in a warmer thermal region than they are now.
The study – carried out by UKCEH, the Universities of Dundee, Glasgow, Reading and Stirling, plus the Dundalk Institute of Technology – was funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and has been published in the journal Nature Communications.
Read more at UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology
Image: Long-term monitoring by UKCEH has revealed yearly-averaged temperatures in Lake Windermere are about 1°C higher than in the 1980s (Credit: UKCEH)
