Our recent story about the freeze over on Lake Superior prompted a lot of discussion. Steven Goddard has submitted this article on the Great Lakes for consideration. – Anthony
Guest post by Steven Goddard
A favorite AGW talking point has been predictions of disastrous effects on the US Great Lakes. A continuous stream of warnings has been written about declining water levels, drought and heat.
Lake Superior water levels are close to normal
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Psst! Your css is showing!
REPLY: GOSH you are quick. It wasn’t up for more than 15 seconds! – Anthony
Steven
You have a distressing habit of posting items based on observations and facts. Please closet yourself in the IT suite and post some nice colourful theoretical computer models
Tonyb
That’s not CSS! 😉
Hm, Great Lakes water levels are actively managed by the Corps of Engineers, primarily to supply water to the St. Lawrence Seaway. I’m not sure how this affects your arguments. And the shore-dwellers are the whiniest bunch of people you will ever see on your TV (if you live near a lake). High water levels lead to increased storm and ice damage in the winter and spring, they blame the Corps for putting to much emphasis on commercial needs over residents. Low water levels strand their boats in shallow marinas and leave homes on shallow inlets landlocked, and they complain about the Corps keeping levels too low and hoarding water in the upper lakes.
Tom,
I doubt that the ACOE is responsible for the record snowfall in Michigan over the last two winters
http://www.mlive.com/news/index.ssf/2008/03/its_a_record_year_for_snowfall.html
http://www.topix.com/city/shelby-mi/2009/01/record-snowfall-in-west-michigan
TonyB,
It is dangerous considering facts when there is funding on the line. For example, the stock market is up today because Citi reported being profitable since January 1,with “lots of cash” in the bank. So why were they given tens of billions of tax dollars, and why did the US government just pass another trillion in spending to fix the apparently non-existent financial crisis? Credit Suisse also recovered without any taxpayer assistance. Ever feel like you are being had?
“A favorite AGW talking point has been predictions of disastrous effects on the US Great Lakes. ”
US Great Lakes? Your manifest destiny is showing.
Well, part of the problem in the lakes region is that the area is still experiencing glacial rebound. The Northern part of the region is rebounding at a greater rate than the Southern and this acts to “tip” the lakes. Imagine water in a dish and you lift one side a little higher than the other. So lake levels on the Southern shores are “rising” while lake levels on the Northern shores are “receding”.
This would be particularly problematic in areas on the shore with a long North/South lake such as Chicago.
Levels in the Great Lakes have varied considerably over time. There was an article in the Chicago Tribune back in June 2007 about research on water levels in the Great Lakes.
Great Lakes’ past may offer clues on climate
From one view of history, the Great Lakes are near record lows, approaching the bottom-scraping frustration of the mid-1960s. From another, longer view, though, the lakes are nearly as high as they’ve ever been, just a few feet below the high-water mark reached at the end of the Little Ice Age in the 1850s. Both pictures are scientifically accurate and are getting more attention from climatologists, lake scientists and environmentalists curious about history’s large climate cycles and how they tip the lakes’ eons-old balancing act of rainfall and runoff, heating and evaporation.
During periods of low water that lasted until 2,000 years ago, a forest stood at the bottom of Duluth harbor and in parts of Lake Huron. Peat bogs stretched between what are now the Apostles Islands near Wisconsin…. Piecing together those clues, climate detectives suspect Lakes Superior, Michigan and Huron may have been lower than 20th Century historical averages in the 13th and 17th Centuries and much higher in the 16th Century as well as over the last 50 years.
Tom,
I agree.. I live near Flathead lake in Montana (the water level is managed). Every year they play a big guessing game on how much water is in the mountains and how fast it will come out. If they get it wrong they either flood people out or don’t have enough water to reach the docks. Either way people scream when they get it wrong.
G
One thing to remember about the Great Lakes levels as well, a vast majority of large communites around the lakes draw there fresh water form them, I am sure much of it does return, but any used for industry/products does not, and the Chicago river which once fed into the lake now draws water from the lake and into the Mississippi. Chicago alone, between the river and consumption is allowed approx. 2 billion gallons per day to leave the lake, yes that is a very small percentage of the total lake volume, but then that is just Chicago, there are many other large communites that draw water out as well, overtime this will have an effect on water levels.
Interesting it’s reported in the BBC, not an American or Canadian news source.
Normal means most of the time. Huge ice pile up during high winds can happen with
normal lake levels and even with low lake levels. I grew up on Lake Erie and spent much time fishing that lake in summers. I’m there almost every summer and it all looks normal to me. Temperatures this season appear to have been a bit below normal and cold blasts from Arctic/Canada still coming down the ‘Chute’. Visiting friend who has place on Lake Ontario reports the above in addition to TV weather channels.
I would expect lower than normal lake levels at end of summer due water use for shipping but they have obviously been recharged due normal snowfall, rainfall, etc.
Saw this on CNN this am. 20ft windblown drifts of lake ice. WOW!!!!
Tom:
“Hm, Great Lakes water levels are actively managed by the Corps of Engineers, primarily to supply water to the St. Lawrence Seaway. I’m not sure how this affects your arguments. ”
From:
The History of Lake Superior Regulation: Implications for the Future
Anne H. Clites1,* and Frank H. Quinn2
“Although Lake Superior is a “regulated” lake, it
is important to understand that the levels and flows
are only controlled to a certain extent. Regulation
has allowed a moderation of the levels and flows of
Lake Superior, within limits that are dictated by nature.
Lake Superior, with a volume of over 12,000
*Corresponding author. E-mail: anne.clites@noaa.gov
cubic kilometers and retention time of 173 years,
has an immense hydraulic “memory.” The St.
Marys River has a limited capacity to pass the
water downstream. Regulatory works on both Lakes
Superior and Ontario have succeeded in limiting
lake level fluctuations which has encouraged more
intensive shoreline development. The remainder of
the Great Lakes system is naturally regulated due to
the large lake surface areas and constricted outlet
conditions.”
The significant drop in summer 2007 water levels in lakes Superior, Michigan & Huron, the latter two sharing a common water level, was driven by the 2006 El Nino with associated higher temperatures, lower precipitation and lower ice levels (hence more winter evaporation). Since there are no control structures on Michigan & Huron, their water levels also fluctuate due to ongoing changes to the sandbars at the outflow of Lake Huron.
Again, the warmistas refuse to acknowledge history on this issue. Go to the NOAA Great Lakes water level site:
http://www.glerl.noaa.gov/data/now/wlevels/levels.html
Have a look at the hydrograph links on the right where it can clearly be seen that the low levels in 2007 have occurred before a number of years ago. You’ll also notice their reference year of 1997 is cherry picked due to the abnormally high levels at that time. Please note that these hydrographs are a little behind in terms of reporting current water levels. Also of interest is the forecast link which for Superior and Michigan/Huron show a continued rebound to or even above long term mean water levels.
One other thing – Steve, your reference to the lakes was the US Great Lakes. Why not just refer to theM as the Great Lakes? After all they are a shared resource between the US and Canada and their joint management by both countries is just one of many examples where the two countries’ governments work closely together for their mutual benefit.
Looks like any other areas year-on-year graph of temps, rain or snowfall.
Normal climate, shifts about doing it’s hopscotch thing.
If I were an alarmist, I’d drop the Great Lakes thing and go for somewhere the year-on-year is warmer. Like the Desert Southwest.
Let’s see… oh yeah… in 15 years the famous Saguaro cactus we see will disappear. Lost to AGW.
Another blow to the falling AGW house of cards.
Exactly Tom, too low is bad for shipping especially in places like the St. Clair river and therefore they try to keep them high. If they get too high we get a lot more shoreline property damage.
Blaming this on AGW is so darn silly it is embarassing.
Now, just suppose that those cute models (computer models !!) that are being used by AGW, the ones they keep secret, behave like the galaxy collision model I tried out. The darn thing was supposed to be fully configurable.
Well, it crashed. It crashed if you made any changes to the defaults. It crashed if you changed the viewing angles. It crashed if you ran it twice.
If I was an AGW modeler, and my model was like that galaxy collision thing, I wouldn’t want anyone to play with it and see how fragile it really was.
Climate change must be tackled before global poverty, says Prince Charles.
Charles has something between the ears, I doubt it is a brain.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/4966002/Climate-change-must-be-tackled-before-global-poverty-says-Prince-Charles.html
Talked to my cousin two days ago. She sees “open water” out from her
resteraunt on the North Shore of Lake Superior. However, that is shown in the
sattelite overview as the black band along the shore, which gives 5-7 miles of
open water in against the shore.
Key point: Sattelite = “real” view of the ice situation. Personal observation =
“anecdotal” and can be corrupt.
Cousin DID indicate she had heard from other sources the ice cover was INDEED extensive this year.
Steve et al.
Of course the Great Lakes are very large, and obviously the CoE does not control snowfall. I’m only pointing out that there is an effort to actively manage lake levels, with Ontario probably the most heavily managed, so lake level measurements will not mean quite the same thing as in an unmanaged lake, and the effect of management needs to be considered.
The all time record low water level on Lake Superior was set in 1926.
It came close again in 2007 but recovered quickly after a major rain event in October 2007. Eyeball observation (by me) suggested that it came up by about half a foot in a hurry – a lot of water.
The lake level is hugely affected by how much water exits into Lake Huron. There was some discussion in Summer 2007 that a new channel dredged for the convenience of shipping had increased the flow rate out of the Lake.
Re: Steven Goddard (08:00:00) :
“Ever feel like you are being had?”
Oh yeah, big time.
The Federal Reserve has given out 2.2 trillion dollars and they won’t say to who.
On the other hand the bbc now confirm that sea levels are rising much faster than previously thought, so we’re all doomed if we live by the sea (600 million people), especially in Lowestoft. my advice is stay by the lake.
“It looks very benign today but the North Sea can turn into a very ferocious beast.”
As for the prince of Wales’ concerns, what can you say about a chap who needs someone to squeeze his toothpaste tube. He clearly knows so much about poverty!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7935159.stm
Englishman,
Perhaps Prince Charles feels guilty about the death of the Princess while he was off writing about becoming Camilla’s feminine hygiene product?
There is a related term which might be an apt description.
Mark,
The WSJ reported on February 27 that Citi was in line to receive more taxpayer money (on top of the $45 billion they already received.) And today we find out Citi has been profitable all year and that they have lots of cash in the bank. Where did that cash come from? If this news had of been released prior to the stimulus bill, it never would have passed. Now the Washington culprits in charge of the bill will claim the bill fixed the financial markets. Unbelievable.