The Canadian Ice Service said combined ice cover stood at just 13 per cent in early February, less than one-third of the long-term average
Researchers who study ice cover on the Great Lakes, and the mysterious happenings beneath, have a problem: There’s precious little of it. And that’s thwarting their ability to understand what declining ice cover means for everyone else throughout the region.
The overall trend, though, is unambiguous: less ice, less often. George Karaganis, an ice-forecasting meteorologist at the CIS, said something changed fundamentally around 1998. After that, the frequency of low ice years greatly increased – a change that’s obvious in many charts based on historical ice data.
For Prof. McKay, that changed in 2007 when he was invited on a week-long expedition aboard an icebreaker on Lake Erie. His research focuses on bacterial blooms and algae on the Great Lakes. McKay and his colleagues gladly accepted, but assumed they’d see nothing noteworthy. According to some forecasts, the Great Lakes could be almost completely ice-free by the end of this century. One concern is the impact that might have for regional weather patterns.
And since shorelines are locked in ice for less of the year, they’re more exposed to winter storms. That spells trouble for coastal properties and roads. There will inevitably also be benign, or even welcome, impacts. Water bodies with any freezing are sometimes referred to as “ice-infested,” an indication of the esteem in which ice is held in the shipping industry.
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