Researchers are studying the way warming water temperatures will impact the Great Lakes region.
Researchers are studying the way warming water temperatures will impact the Great Lakes region. Their work shows that small differences in lake surface temperatures can have a big impact on summer climate and can fuel extreme weather — crucial information.
The Great Lakes have a profound impact on the country’s identity, economy and its climate. But the long-term influence of the Great Lakes on regional weather patterns, especially under a changing climate, has not been well understood. That’s because most climate models don’t realistically consider how the temperature or movement of six quadrillion gallons of lake water interact with the atmosphere.
A project called Coastal Observations, Mechanisms, and Predictions Across Systems and Scales (COMPASS), funded by the Office of Biological and Environmental Research in the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Science, is working to address this knowledge gap. In a new study, a team of collaborators including Jiali Wang of DOE’ s Argonne National Laboratory used high resolution regional model experiments to explore how lake surface temperatures may affect the climate of the Great Lakes region.
Read more at DOE/Argonne National Laboratory
Photo Credit: csbonawitz via Pixabay
