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Lake Superior dropping and warming, fishing and boating effected
Mighty Lake Superior Mystifies Scientists
By JOHN FLESHER,AP Posted: 2007-07-29 18:13:34 Filed Under: Nation News, Science News MARQUETTE, Mich. (July 29) - As the research boat bobs up and down on gray, choppy Lake Superior, Michigan Tech University chemist Noel Urban and two students drop a metal cylinder over the side to retrieve a water sample from the bottom. They are measuring carbon dioxide content -- an unspectacular statistic by itself, yet an important piece of a highly complex puzzle. "It helps us develop a model that can say what's going to happen as the lake warms up," Urban says. Plenty of people are wondering the same thing. Something seems amiss with mighty Superior, the deepest and coldest of the Great Lakes, which together hold nearly 20 percent of the world's fresh surface water. Superior's surface area is roughly the same as South Carolina's, the biggest of any freshwater lake on Earth. It's deep enough to hold all the other Great Lakes plus three additional Lake Eries. Yet over the past year, its level has ebbed to the lowest point in eight decades and will set a record this fall if, as expected, it dips three more inches. Its average temperature has surged 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit since 1979, significantly above the 2.7-degree rise in the region's air temperature during the same period. That's no small deal for a freshwater sea that was created from glacial melt as the Ice Age ended and remains chilly in all seasons. A weather buoy on the western side recently recorded an "amazing" 75 degrees, "as warm a surface temperature as we've ever seen in this lake," says Jay Austin, assistant professor at the University of Minnesota at Duluth's Large Lakes Observatory. Water levels also have receded on the other Great Lakes since the late 1990s. But the suddenness and severity of Superior's changes worry many in the region; it has plunged more than a foot in the past year. Shorelines are dozens of yards wider than usual, giving sunbathers wider beaches but also exposing mucky bottomlands and rotting vegetation. "C'mon, girls, get out of the mud," Dan Arsenault, 32, calls to his two young daughters at a park near the mouth of the St. Marys River on the southeastern end of Lake Superior. Bree, 5, and 3-year-old Andie are stomping in puddles where water was waist-deep a couple of years ago. The floatation rope that previously designated the swimming area now rests on moist ground. "This is the lowest I've ever seen it," says Arsenault, a lifelong resident of Sault Ste. Marie in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Superior still has lots of water. Its average depth is 483 feet and it reaches 1,332 feet at the deepest point. Erie, the shallowest Great Lake, is 210 feet at its deepest and averages only 62 feet. Lake Michigan averages 279 feet and is 925 feet at its deepest. Yet along Superior's shores, boats can't reach many mooring sites and marina operators are begging the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to dredge shallow harbors. Ferry service between Grand Portage, Minn., and Isle Royale National Park was scaled back because one of the company's boats couldn't dock. Sally Zabelka has turned away boaters from Chippewa Landing marina in the eastern Upper Peninsula, where not long ago 27-foot vessels easily made their way up the channel from the lake's Brimley Bay. "In essence, our dock is useless this year," she says. Another worry: As the bay heats up, the perch, walleye and smallmouth bass that have lured anglers to her campground and tackle shop are migrating to cooler waters in the open lake. Low water has cost the shipping industry millions of dollars. Vessels are carrying lighter loads of iron ore and coal to avoid running aground in shallow channels. Superior's retreat creates a double whammy in Grand Marais, where the only deepwater harbor of refuge along a 90-mile, shipwreck-strewn section of the lake already was filling with sand because of a decaying breakwall. Burt Township, the local government, is extending the harbor's boat launching ramp an additional 40 feet, Supervisor Jack Hubbard says. Sand and shallow water are choking off aquatic vegetation that once provided habitat for hefty pike and trout. Puffing on a pipe in a Grand Marais pub, retiree Ted Sietsema voices the suspicion held by many in the villages along Superior's southern shoreline: Someone is taking the water. The government is diverting it to places with more people and political influence - along Lakes Huron and Michigan and even the Sun Belt, via the Mississippi River. "Don't give me that global warming stuff," Sietsema says. "That water is going west. That big aquifer out there is empty but they can still water the desert. It's got to be coming from somewhere." A familiar theory - but all wet, says Scott Thieme, hydraulics and hydrology chief with the Corps of Engineers district office in Detroit. Water does exit Lake Superior through locks, power plants and gates on the St. Marys River, but in amounts strictly regulated under a 1909 pact with Canada. The actual forces at work, while mysterious, are not the stuff of spy novels, Thieme says. Precipitation has tapered off across the upper Great Lakes since the 1970s and is nearly 6 inches below normal in the Superior watershed the past year. Water evaporation rates are up sharply because mild winters have shrunk the winter ice cap - just as climate change computer models predict for the next half-century. Yet those models also envision more precipitation as global warming sets in, says Brent Lofgren, a physical scientist with the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory in Ann Arbor. Instead there's drought, suggesting other causes. Cynthia Sellinger, the lab's deputy director, suspects residual effects of El Nino, the warming of equatorial Pacific waters that produced warmer winters in the late 1990s, just as the lakes began receding. Both long-term climate change and short-term meteorological factors may be driving water levels down, says Urban, the Michigan Tech researcher. But he and Austin are more concerned about effects than causes. There's a big knowledge gap about how food webs and other aquatic systems will respond to warmer temperatures, they say. "It's just not clear what the ultimate result will be as we turn the knob up," says Austin, the Minnesota-Duluth professor. "It could be great for fisheries or fisheries could crash." That's a question Urban and his colleagues want to help answer with their carbon dioxide measurements on Lake Superior. Plugging those and other statistics into comprehensive ecosystem models will give scientists a basis for making predictions. "We're always reacting to what's already happened instead of looking forward," Urban says. "As long as we have a poor understanding of the basic functions of the lake, we won't be able to say whether this warming is of major concern or not." Editor's note - John Flesher is the AP correspondent in Traverse City and has covered environmental issues since 1992. |
#2
posted to rec.boats
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Lake Superior dropping and warming, fishing and boating effected
Chuck Gould wrote:
Mighty Lake Superior Mystifies Scientists By JOHN FLESHER,AP Posted: 2007-07-29 18:13:34 Filed Under: Nation News, Science News MARQUETTE, Mich. (July 29) - As the research boat bobs up and down on gray, choppy Lake Superior, Michigan Tech University chemist Noel Urban and two students drop a metal cylinder over the side to retrieve a water sample from the bottom. They are measuring carbon dioxide content -- an unspectacular statistic by itself, yet an important piece of a highly complex puzzle. "It helps us develop a model that can say what's going to happen as the lake warms up," Urban says. Plenty of people are wondering the same thing. Something seems amiss with mighty Superior, the deepest and coldest of the Great Lakes, which together hold nearly 20 percent of the world's fresh surface water. It's the Chinese. Wal-Mart and Halliburton teamed up to ship another U.S. asset to the PRC, this time via a through-the-earth pipeline. The deal was brokered by Dicque Cheney. China will run the water through its non-existent sewage treatment plants, bottle it, and ship it back to us for drinking. |
#3
posted to rec.boats
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Lake Superior dropping and warming, fishing and boating effected
On Jul 30, 9:27?am, HK wrote:
Chuck Gould wrote: Mighty Lake Superior Mystifies Scientists By JOHN FLESHER,AP Posted: 2007-07-29 18:13:34 Filed Under: Nation News, Science News MARQUETTE, Mich. (July 29) - As the research boat bobs up and down on gray, choppy Lake Superior, Michigan Tech University chemist Noel Urban and two students drop a metal cylinder over the side to retrieve a water sample from the bottom. They are measuring carbon dioxide content -- an unspectacular statistic by itself, yet an important piece of a highly complex puzzle. "It helps us develop a model that can say what's going to happen as the lake warms up," Urban says. Plenty of people are wondering the same thing. Something seems amiss with mighty Superior, the deepest and coldest of the Great Lakes, which together hold nearly 20 percent of the world's fresh surface water. It's the Chinese. Wal-Mart and Halliburton teamed up to ship another U.S. asset to the PRC, this time via a through-the-earth pipeline. The deal was brokered by Dicque Cheney. China will run the water through its non-existent sewage treatment plants, bottle it, and ship it back to us for drinking.- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text - That's almost as good as "the western aquifer has gone dry, and that's sucking all the water from Lake Superior" Everybody sees some things change in a lifetime. In fact, those of us more than just a few decades old have seen more changes in the world in the last 50 years than there were in the previous few hundred, and one change we're witnessing is a climate change. Never mind whether it's man-made, (we won't know one way or the other until it's too late) but it's real enough and the effects will be the save whether it's caused by sunspots or 2-stroke outboard exhaust. |
#4
posted to rec.boats
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Lake Superior dropping and warming, fishing and boating effected
Yet along Superior's shores, boats can't reach many mooring sites and marina operators are begging the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to dredge shallow harbors. You can thank your "great" President for that....draining the lakes "just" to keep the Mississippi high. And now, since we havent put a quarantine area into place for these trashy European Freighters dumping their ballast coming up the St. Lawrence in place...we have Asian Carp caught in Lake Huron!!! THIS FISH spells the end for the lakes...they eat EVERYTHING....just like Asians!!! |
#5
posted to rec.boats
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Lake Superior dropping and warming, fishing and boating effected
On Jul 30, 11:48 am, Chuck Gould wrote:
Unfortunately with the revelations about temperature monitoring stations around the country being "ooops" set up next to generators, too close to the pavement, up against buildings, etc. All "mistakes" which make for innacuracies, almost always to the hot side, a lot of this stuff seems much more sinister than one might think. I just caught the end of the story, but apparently the agency in charge of monitoring these sites has removed their locations from the public arena as news agencies were finding a lot of problems across the board and they like most GW advocates, don't want to be monitored or challenged. You have scientists calling for other scientists to lose their right to teach for doubting, what is proving to be a shady industry all around. Could be the biggest scam since Y2K, but we are not allowed to question, or even look. |
#6
posted to rec.boats
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Lake Superior dropping and warming, fishing and boating effected
On Mon, 30 Jul 2007 10:03:53 -0700, Chuck Gould
wrote: GO NUCLEAR!! -- John H |
#7
posted to rec.boats
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Lake Superior dropping and warming, fishing and boating effected
On Mon, 30 Jul 2007 10:35:57 -0700, Corsair23 wrote:
Yet along Superior's shores, boats can't reach many mooring sites and marina operators are begging the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to dredge shallow harbors. You can thank your "great" President for that....draining the lakes "just" to keep the Mississippi high. Didn't that rationale get dumped early on? -- John H |
#8
posted to rec.boats
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Lake Superior dropping and warming, fishing and boating effected
Chuck Gould wrote:
Mighty Lake Superior Mystifies Scientists By JOHN FLESHER,AP Posted: 2007-07-29 18:13:34 Filed Under: Nation News, Science News MARQUETTE, Mich. (July 29) - As the research boat bobs up and down on gray, choppy Lake Superior, Michigan Tech University chemist Noel Urban and two students drop a metal cylinder over the side to retrieve a water sample from the bottom. They are measuring carbon dioxide content -- an unspectacular statistic by itself, yet an important piece of a highly complex puzzle. "It helps us develop a model that can say what's going to happen as the lake warms up," Urban says. Plenty of people are wondering the same thing. Something seems amiss with mighty Superior, the deepest and coldest of the Great Lakes, which together hold nearly 20 percent of the world's fresh surface water. Superior's surface area is roughly the same as South Carolina's, the biggest of any freshwater lake on Earth. It's deep enough to hold all the other Great Lakes plus three additional Lake Eries. Yet over the past year, its level has ebbed to the lowest point in eight decades and will set a record this fall if, as expected, it dips three more inches. Its average temperature has surged 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit since 1979, significantly above the 2.7-degree rise in the region's air temperature during the same period. That's no small deal for a freshwater sea that was created from glacial melt as the Ice Age ended and remains chilly in all seasons. A weather buoy on the western side recently recorded an "amazing" 75 degrees, "as warm a surface temperature as we've ever seen in this lake," says Jay Austin, assistant professor at the University of Minnesota at Duluth's Large Lakes Observatory. Water levels also have receded on the other Great Lakes since the late 1990s. But the suddenness and severity of Superior's changes worry many in the region; it has plunged more than a foot in the past year. Shorelines are dozens of yards wider than usual, giving sunbathers wider beaches but also exposing mucky bottomlands and rotting vegetation. "C'mon, girls, get out of the mud," Dan Arsenault, 32, calls to his two young daughters at a park near the mouth of the St. Marys River on the southeastern end of Lake Superior. Bree, 5, and 3-year-old Andie are stomping in puddles where water was waist-deep a couple of years ago. The floatation rope that previously designated the swimming area now rests on moist ground. "This is the lowest I've ever seen it," says Arsenault, a lifelong resident of Sault Ste. Marie in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Superior still has lots of water. Its average depth is 483 feet and it reaches 1,332 feet at the deepest point. Erie, the shallowest Great Lake, is 210 feet at its deepest and averages only 62 feet. Lake Michigan averages 279 feet and is 925 feet at its deepest. Yet along Superior's shores, boats can't reach many mooring sites and marina operators are begging the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to dredge shallow harbors. Ferry service between Grand Portage, Minn., and Isle Royale National Park was scaled back because one of the company's boats couldn't dock. Sally Zabelka has turned away boaters from Chippewa Landing marina in the eastern Upper Peninsula, where not long ago 27-foot vessels easily made their way up the channel from the lake's Brimley Bay. "In essence, our dock is useless this year," she says. Another worry: As the bay heats up, the perch, walleye and smallmouth bass that have lured anglers to her campground and tackle shop are migrating to cooler waters in the open lake. Low water has cost the shipping industry millions of dollars. Vessels are carrying lighter loads of iron ore and coal to avoid running aground in shallow channels. Superior's retreat creates a double whammy in Grand Marais, where the only deepwater harbor of refuge along a 90-mile, shipwreck-strewn section of the lake already was filling with sand because of a decaying breakwall. Burt Township, the local government, is extending the harbor's boat launching ramp an additional 40 feet, Supervisor Jack Hubbard says. Sand and shallow water are choking off aquatic vegetation that once provided habitat for hefty pike and trout. Puffing on a pipe in a Grand Marais pub, retiree Ted Sietsema voices the suspicion held by many in the villages along Superior's southern shoreline: Someone is taking the water. The government is diverting it to places with more people and political influence - along Lakes Huron and Michigan and even the Sun Belt, via the Mississippi River. "Don't give me that global warming stuff," Sietsema says. "That water is going west. That big aquifer out there is empty but they can still water the desert. It's got to be coming from somewhere." A familiar theory - but all wet, says Scott Thieme, hydraulics and hydrology chief with the Corps of Engineers district office in Detroit. Water does exit Lake Superior through locks, power plants and gates on the St. Marys River, but in amounts strictly regulated under a 1909 pact with Canada. The actual forces at work, while mysterious, are not the stuff of spy novels, Thieme says. Precipitation has tapered off across the upper Great Lakes since the 1970s and is nearly 6 inches below normal in the Superior watershed the past year. Water evaporation rates are up sharply because mild winters have shrunk the winter ice cap - just as climate change computer models predict for the next half-century. Yet those models also envision more precipitation as global warming sets in, says Brent Lofgren, a physical scientist with the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory in Ann Arbor. Instead there's drought, suggesting other causes. Cynthia Sellinger, the lab's deputy director, suspects residual effects of El Nino, the warming of equatorial Pacific waters that produced warmer winters in the late 1990s, just as the lakes began receding. Both long-term climate change and short-term meteorological factors may be driving water levels down, says Urban, the Michigan Tech researcher. But he and Austin are more concerned about effects than causes. There's a big knowledge gap about how food webs and other aquatic systems will respond to warmer temperatures, they say. "It's just not clear what the ultimate result will be as we turn the knob up," says Austin, the Minnesota-Duluth professor. "It could be great for fisheries or fisheries could crash." That's a question Urban and his colleagues want to help answer with their carbon dioxide measurements on Lake Superior. Plugging those and other statistics into comprehensive ecosystem models will give scientists a basis for making predictions. "We're always reacting to what's already happened instead of looking forward," Urban says. "As long as we have a poor understanding of the basic functions of the lake, we won't be able to say whether this warming is of major concern or not." Editor's note - John Flesher is the AP correspondent in Traverse City and has covered environmental issues since 1992. Has everyone see all the fouled streams from European mine operators and other discharges along the Canadian shore??? Even in the Soo the Canadian Steel mill discharges into a stream running through the middle and right where the tour boats used to go anyway. The water was almost a florescent green and discolored the Lake water for a long way. I remember, in 2002, hearing a radio news program near near Wawa that a European Company was blackmailing the Canadian Government into letting it take most of a streams flow, in the manufacture of a base of some sort used in toothpaste and other things and returning much less flow but contaminated. If the Government didn't go along with them they were going to somehow influence other European Companies to stay home. It has been too long to remember details. I'm sure this contributes greatly to warming of Superior as well as contamination. It appeared that Eruopeans and other mfgs found a new area to exploit with little concern for what their destruction in the late 70's. The people along the north shore toward Thunder Bay didn't have any say and were disgusted. A little old Lady, at one of the few stores, told of how the miners treated the area's Residents and Communites much as was portrayed of the lawless tv towns of the old west. I guess the Europeans and other miners from the eastern Ontario figured that was usual and expected conduct for them. Ontario figures it has plenty of room to swallow pollution and few Residents that care or who are too intimidated to complain. Superior is paying part of the price. |
#9
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Lake Superior dropping and warming, fishing and boating effected
John H. wrote:
On Mon, 30 Jul 2007 10:35:57 -0700, Corsair23 wrote: Yet along Superior's shores, boats can't reach many mooring sites and marina operators are begging the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to dredge shallow harbors. You can thank your "great" President for that....draining the lakes "just" to keep the Mississippi high. Didn't that rationale get dumped early on? There is speculation that the Corp of Engineers is responsible for the lake level drops to begin with. The St. Clair river was a "bottle neck" for outflow from the upper Great Lakes. With the shipping channel contantly being dredged, the "bottle neck" is no longer slowing the outflow into Lake St. Clair and Lake Erie. |
#10
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Lake Superior dropping and warming, fishing and boating effected
wrote in message ups.com... On Jul 30, 11:48 am, Chuck Gould wrote: Unfortunately with the revelations about temperature monitoring stations around the country being "ooops" set up next to generators, too close to the pavement, up against buildings, etc. You don't say... http://www.norcalblogs.com/watts/200...rature_22.html db |
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