NASA researchers who looked at satellite data say some of the worlds large, deep lakes are doing what the air and the ocean have been doing lately: getting warmer. Their analysis, in the American Geophysical Union's journal Geophysical Research Letters, is boosted by press releases from both the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena and the AGU.
Given that high profile, and that one of the world's best known lakes, Tahoe on the California-Nevada border high in the Sierras, it's a bit of a surprise there is not more coverage for this. Could be climate change burnout and weariness with dealing with contrarions. On the other hand, none of the media coverage I've seen wasted time calling up a few such contrarions to relay their insistence on (take your pick) natural cycles, their conviction that a just Earth and its creator won't let anything go wrong, their concern about miscalibration of instruments, their complaints that the Medieval Warm Period does not get enough attention and most scientists are just in it for the grant money and computer models are just make believe anyway. Woops. Slipped into rant mode there. So sorry.
In a sense, this news is not much news. If the ground-level air is warming, borehole temperatures are going up, the troposphere is warming, the glaciers are melting, and the oceans are warming, bigger news would be that lakes were not being carried along.
Stories:
- AP - Seth Borenstein: World's lakes getting hotter, more than the air ;
- Orange County Register - Pat Brennan: The world's lakes are warming ;
- Science News - Janet Raloff: Lakes are warming across the globe; Raloff describes not only the JPL study, but another one to come out soon with corresponding info on additional lakes, in China.
- CNN - Emanuella Grinberg: NASA study finds Earth's lakes are warming ;
Other climate news:
- Science News - Alexandra Witze: The final climate frontiers / Scientists aim to improve and localize their predictions ; Cover story, and a serious look with only perfunctory reference to climategate or on the IPCC's quality control flubs that in the end left no dent in the underlying scientific consensus.
Grist for the Mill: NASA JPL Press Release ; AGU Press Release ;
- Charlie Petit
