“Lake Baikal, Russia- The deepest lake in the world at 5370 ft”
Earth’s oldest, largest, and deepest fresh water lake, Lake Baikal in Siberia, is also the most bio-diverse lake in the world. Over three generations (beginning in the ‘40s), a family of Russian scientists have collected data on the lake and climate, resulting in new information about the ways in which climate change affects the lake’s water temperature. This change then affects all life in the lake. The research has discovered numerous climate variability signals within the data (called teleconnections). One of these teleconnections, for example, is that “changes in Lake Baikal water temperature correlate with monthly variability in El Niño indices, reflecting sea surface temperatures over the Pacific Ocean tens of thousands of kilometers away. At the same time, Lake Baikal's temperatures are influenced by strong interactions with Pacific Ocean pressure fields described by the Pacific Decadal Oscillation.” The scientists found that seasonality of this lake’s surface temperatures relate to the changing intensity and direction of the jet stream. According to the study, this “appears to forecast seasonal onset in Siberia about three months in advance. Lake Baikal's seasonality also tracked decadal-scale variations in Earth's rotational velocity. The speed of Earth's rotation determines the length of a day, which differs by milliseconds from day to day depending on the strength of atmospheric winds, including the jet stream. This scale of variability was also seen to affect the timing variability in seasonal lake warming and cooling, reinforcing the mechanistic role of the jet stream.”
The results of this research are important because they provide us with information about how variation in climate affects the local ecosystems over the long term. The water temperature of Lake Baikal, as well as other physical drivers of local ecology, reflects global climate systems; this helps scientists to decide what important ecological changes are going to occur, as well as to foresee the related consequences. This research is also important for our Ecology class to examine because it demonstrates the fact that many different systems in the natural world are interrelated, even if they take place far away from one another. I believe that research like this is extremely important for understanding why things happen in nature, as well as because it allows scientists to be able to actually predict possible changes and trends. This could also be valuable information in allowing scientists to protect the environment/ecosystems where these changes take place.
Source: ScienceDaily from February 18, 2010
