NASA image shows extensive 'record level' ice coverage of the Great Lakes

NASA image shows extensive 'record level' ice coverage of the Great Lakes.HT :Weathernetwork.

Last year, ice covered about 38 per cent of the Great Lakes, which was a dramatic jump from 13 per cent in 2011-2012.

"The extreme freezing of the lakes is an unusual sight for residents, and has brought tourists flocking to certain locations, such as the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore, where Lake Superior’s thick ice has thousands trekking about one mile across the lake to visit spectacular frozen ice caves," NASA says.

The extensive ice coverage however, interferes with marine commerce, boating and fishing, all of which depend on navigable waterways.

"It also closes the lakes to migratory birds which flock here in the winter time," adds NASA.

Related:  Great Lakes ice cover reaches 20-year high.

Great Lakes ice cover reaches 20-year high.

Great Lakes ice cover reaches 20-year high. HT: SunNews.


The Great Lakes are more iced over than any time in the past 20 years.

Registering at 88.4% ice coverage Friday -- up from 60% on Jan. 29 -- the world's largest cluster of freshwater lakes is almost entirely frozen over.

The all-time record is 94.8% in 1979. The last time they came this close to being fully frozen was 1994, when ice cover hit 90.7%.

Last year's ice cover maxed out at about 38%.

Lake Ontario remains mostly unfrozen, however. The lowest of all five, it was at 41.4% ice cover Friday.

Lake Superior was 94%, Michigan 80.8%, Huron 95% and Erie 95.6%. The increased ice cover may slow the spring thaw in nearby regions, keeping farm crops dormant longer. It also poses challenges to the shipping industry.

The data is from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory in Ann Arbor, Mich.More detail can be found here

"Global Warming on Steroids" - The Great Lakes are now 79% ice covered.

"Global Warming on Steroids" - The Great Lakes are now 79% ice covered.HT: Anthony Farnell.

Combine all the open water left and it's less than the size of Lake Michigan.

Do the Great Lakes freeze in the winter?

The Great Lakes do freeze, but not completely. According to Ray Assel of the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory, ice cover on the Great Lakes varies from lake to lake and year to year. For example, in a year with normal temperatures, 25 percent of Lake Ontario will be frozen over, while up to 90 percent of Lake Erie will be frozen. However, wind and water movement over bodies of water as large and deep as the Great Lakes make it unlikely the lakes have ever frozen over completely for any significant length of time.

The Great Lakes have come close to freezing over completely during the extremely cold winters of 1976-77, 1977-78 and 1978-79, with up to 90 percent ice coverage. However, Assel says that severe winter air temperatures are not necessary for large ice cover on the lakes. A cool summer and fall can result in below normal water temperatures by late fall. Extensive ice cover can then form with only average winter temperatures.

As for the Niagara Falls, the volume and speed of the water flowing over the falls prevents them from freezing, as does the ice-boom at the mouth of Lake Erie. The ice-boom is a series of floating steel pontoons extending across the river from Buffalo, New York to Fort Erie, Ontario. It prevents ice from clogging the river and hydroelectric intakes by helping an "ice bridge" (a stable ice cover) to form at the mouth of Lake Erie. Before the installation of the ice-boom in 1964, the American side of the falls froze over in 1909, 1938 and 1949 because ice jams upstream reduced the water flow. Ice bridges can also form below the falls when ice goes over the falls and freezes to the edges of the gorge, resulting in a buildup of ice (as thick as fifty feet in some places) stretching across the entire river. For photographs of historical ice bridges on the falls, go to Edsen Breyer's Postcard Museum.

According to the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory.

Let’s look at each individual lake.

Lake Superior - Almost frozen over (92 percent covered with ice).

Lake Michigan - Now 51 percent covered with ice. Coyotes were seen walking on the ice just offshore of Chicago this week. This makes us wonder if the lakes freeze over totally, will animals from Canada be able to cross over Lake Huron or Lake Superior, and enter Michigan.

Lake Huron - Ice cover rocketed up an additional 14 percent this week, climbing to a total ice cover of 86 percent. At that rate, Lake Huron could be almost frozen over, or frozen over by the end of next week.

Lake Erie - The shallowest of the Great Lakes, Lake Erie has an average depth of 62 feet and a maximum depth of 210 feet. It also has the least volume of any Great Lake, with 116 cubic miles of water. So it should come as no surprise that Lake Erie is 96 percent covered with ice.

Lake Ontario - Although Lake Ontario is the smallest Great Lake when it comes to surface area, its  average depth of 283 feet makes it the second deepest Great Lake behind Lake Superior. Lake Ontario actually holds more than three times the amount of water when compared to Lake Erie. Lake Ontario is only 32 percent covered in ice.

Will ice continue to grow?
The ice cover should continue to grow at a rapid rate based on temperatures expected in the next few weeks.

It is going to be close, but we may be living in a historic winter with regards to amount of Great Lakes ice.


See entire article, along with photos of individual lakes : http://www.mlive.com/weather/index.ssf/2014/02/great_lakes_added_11_percent_i.html

For a look at current and historical Great Lakes surface and ice cover, go to GLERL's Great Lakes Surface Environmental Analysis pages.Hmmm......So the last time they were completely frozen over was 10,000 years ago at the end of the last Ice age.

Video - Horseshoe Falls in Winter.

Global Cooling: be afraid........be very afraid.

Global Cooling: be afraid........be very afraid.(Telegraph).In Perth, Australia I'm staying with one of the country's most brilliant polymaths David Archibald. This morning, he treated to me to a scary presentation he recently delivered to the Institute of World Policy in Washington DC, where he is a visiting fellow. The title is Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, representing the four threats which Archibald believes are the ones we should most fear. The four horsemen, i.e. great challenges the world will soon have to face, are: a decreasing extraction of oil, causing growing prices of energy and, by extension, food; Pakistan's nuclear weapons program, which threatens proliferation and, perhaps, even a nuclear war in the region; rapid population growth in the Middle East and North Africa coupled with higher food imports in those regions, which spells mass starvation; and a 210-year climate cooling cycle. I'm not sure I'm quite as pessimistic as Archibald is on peak oil and shale gas – the latter, he estimates, is only good for another twenty years (the real energy solution, he reckons, is thorium reactors). But the area where I really hope he is wrong is on global cooling. If his analysis of declining sunspot activity is correct, then global mean temperatures are going to decline by about 2 degrees C by 2040 – completely undoing all that lovely beneficial (but rather meagre 0.8 degrees C) global warming we have experienced in the last 150 years. It will mean longer, colder winters and cooler summers. But far worse than the discomfort will be the effect it has on grain production. The shift in latitudes at which corn and wheat can be grown will be the equivalent of losing a belt 300 kilometres wide all around the world, leading to the loss perhaps 400 million tonnes per annum of grain. The result will be rising food prices, grain shortages – and a 50 per cent likelihood of the kind of volcanic-influenced disaster that led to the horrors of the 1816 Year Without A Summer, precipitating crop failures, weird Turner sunsets, and 200,000 deaths in Europe alone. Still there will be at least one consolation. Phil Jones, Michael Mann, James Hansen and Al Gore will all, most likely, still be around to see their entire religious belief system collapsing around their ears.Read and see the full story here.