Rapid disappearance of perennial ice cover on Canada’s most northern Lake

March 18, 2015 in post by Davesne.G

Canada’s most northern lake, Ward Hunt Lake, has lost its perennial ice cover in 2011 and 2012. According to scientific archives and satellite imagery, this is the first recorded occurrence of complete open water conditions on this lake, usually known for maintaining a >3.5 m thick cover even in late summer. Geocryolab member Michel Paquette shows in a newly published article in Geophysical Research Letters that the decay of the ice cover began in 2008 and is the result of a succession of warm summers from 2008 onwards. The implications of phenological changes of lake ice covers are numerous, they greatly affect limnological conditions such as thermal regime and stratification, water chemistry and lake biology.

To view the paper:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley. com/doi/10.1002/2014GL062960/ abstract

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Rapid disappearance of perennial ice cover on Canada’s most northern Lake by Geocryolab is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License .

Tags: Ice , lake , Ward Hunt

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