Some of those in currently warm locals have been wondering “What’s with all those midWesterners yammering? How cold could it be? ” Well, on Twitter, someone posted a NOAA map showing the Great Lakes are currently 87% frozen. This has not happened in a long time. Googling “Ice Fishing Chicago” will lead you to forums of happy ice fishermen!
I was tempted to open betting on final ice coverage, but I read the Canadians are predicting 100% frozen. Since they lakes can’t reach 101% frozen, this makes ice coverage betting a poor choice under the circumstances. (Had we done this in September, we might have a decent spread.) In any case, it’s only the beginning of February and remains cold, so ice will likely increase for at least a few weeks. We can watch the ice tallies mount at NOAA’s page.
We could bet on maximum Arctic ice, which is just a few weeks from now.
Never having paid attention to this before and not knowing much about the lakes, the pattern is interesting. Farther south should = less ice, but that seems to be trumped by depth? Still, why is Ontario so low….last downstream, last to cool by inflow/outflow? The Ontario/Erie discrepancy baffles me.
Edit: Here at least we can talk about 4C density maximum 🙂
Is this “extreme weather” or “natural variation”?
Is there a Hidden Heat Layer in any of the Great Lakes? Maybe a Great Lakes Oscillation awaiting discovery?
What if the CAGW and the Solar guys are both right and all that CO2 is merely offsetting or delaying the initial dive into a new Ice Age?
There has to be a way to spin this as portending really bad news with ideological implications. Mere weather seems so intolerably boring in a Post-AlGore age.
Cryosphere Today Arctic sea ice area was at a record low on February 9. The Great Lakes are probably freezing because of the polar vortex, but that is also bringing warm air north in the Pacific and reducing the extent and area of Bering Sea ice when it would normally be increasing. The Atlantic side isn’t doing any better with Barents Sea ice retreating and Greenland Sea ice at low levels.
For some reason, NOAA keeps removing the AMO Index value for November, 2013 rather than adding the values for December, 2013 and January, 2014. I suspect that when they are finally updated, the values will be high.
Look on the plus side, frozen over Great Lakes means no lake effect snow.
bill_c,
I don’t know precisely what affects which Lake surfaces freeze earliest. Yes, North/South must have an effect. Depth must have some effect. But other things could too: flow speed, where water comes from and so on. After all, water flows mostly towards the Atlantic so some water from Eerie toward Ontario, which means Eerie’s temperature might affect Ontario, but I don’t know whether this effect is large.
Elevation may have some effect: Niagra Falls is between Eerie and Ontario, so even though Ontario is further north, it’s much lower elevation might affect the local climate. (In contrast, Michigan and Huron are at comparable elevation with water sometimes flowing from Huron into Michigan and vice-versa. Erie’s elevation is close to Michigan and Huron also, with Superior a little higher up.)
You’d really have to ask someone who know more about the lakes to learn which factors matter.
DeWitt,
I’m far enough west that I never get much of that. But fear not, we’ve gotten plenty of “not lake effect snow”. The BBQ has a nice little snow hat on it again!
Lucia, did you see the recent pictures of the U.S. Niagara Falls frozen over? Pretty amazing. I’d seen some historic pictures of frozen Niagara Falls, but not in my lifetime.
To keep matters in perspective, one of the previous Niagara Falls freezings was in 1936, also presumably due to a polar vortex, though the term wasn’t used then. The following summer of 1936 was extremely hot (1,1A) with 2012 in many ways. In both cases, the heat wave was attributed to a stationary high pressure zone over North America.
A cold winter doesn’t mean that we won’t have a hot summer.
Way back in December, saw some photos that turned out to falsely dated. Are there real ones now?
lucia (Comment #124241)
February 12th, 2014 at 10:45 am
Indeed – I’m hoping one such somebody reads this blog! 🙂
Related to flow, I don’t know but I suspect the VAST majority of inflow to Ontario comes from Erie via the Niagara river. I’d guess:
*Superior and Huron freeze first being farthest north. Superior is farther north but deeper. Also these are going to have the coldest inflow in the fall and early winter due to being fed by a lot of south flowing streams.
*Michigan freezes later because it’s farther south and very deep.
*I am guessing Erie is on a tipping edge this year where the temperature differences haven’t been that great between it and say Huron, even though Huron is farther north. And Erie is the shallowest, but I bet it doesn’t freeze as much as Huron in a “normal” year.
*Ontario has too much going on, can’t figure it out.
This is all just guesswork, I suppose I could look up some of this stuff.
These pictures were taken around Jan 9. They also have some historical photos.
http://knlive.ctvnews.ca/incredible-photos-of-niagara-falls-encased-in-ice-1.1632351
Steve McIntyre (Comment #124243)
February 12th, 2014 at 10:59 am
Presumably the atmospheric dynamics in both cases are influenced by warm NH oceans. I commented somewhere else recently that this doesn’t seem to be helping the American Southwest get rain, as it apparently did in the 30’s. Well, chaos I guess.
The weather channel has the frozen falls
http://www.weather.com/news/science/stunning-photos-niagara-falls-freeze-20140110
There’s a great live-feed video of Niagara Falls here.
Lucia
I am a Great Lakes enthusiast and have been using Environment Canada for my year around view of these bodies of fresh water. My perspective began after reading “Paddle to the Sea” by Holling C. Holling.
What follows is my reasoning why the Great Lakes freeze over as they have:
I prefer colored maps, especially those that give a percentage of ice related to open water: i.e. , 9/10 (red) and so on to 1/10 (blue) and gray, fast ice.
Environment Canada shows the coloring and the numbering it uses to gauge how much ice there is:
http://iceweb1.cis.ec.gc.ca/Prod20/page2.xhtml?CanID=11080&Lang=en
I had posted most of this at WUWT:
The Great Lakes are but widening in a river that extends from a Northern Ontario water catchment area to the Atlantic Ocean via the St. Lawrence River. Warm land surface water flows into these colder basins more on the surface, especially Lake Superior and Northern Lake Huron. The warm land surface water of Lake Superior flows through the St. Mary’s River and into the connector of Lake Michigan and Lake Huron at the Straits of Mackinac. Lake Michigan has no natural exit so the warm water remains on the surface and keeps Lake Michigan from icing over completely a majority of time.
Lake Superior at Latitude 47.7 ices over as it is not only colder to begin with, but is no longer receiving warm land surface water from its Northern Ontario catchment region because that is now mostly frozen.
Lake Huron ices over because the warmer surface water can exit via its natural outlet of the St Clair River to the Detroit River and out into Lake Erie. Lake Erie, Latitude 42.2 ices over first because it is shallow (62 feet average depth) and looses it heat at depth quickly. Lake Erie also has a short transit time compared to the other Great Lakes. The warm land surface water passes beneath Erie’s ice to flow into the Niagara River and over Niagara Falls.
Lake Ontario is the last Great Lake to ice over because it is the recipient of the relatively warm land surface waters for the whole catchment area of the Great Lakes. Notice how the Western Region of Lake Ontario has not iced over where the Eastern region is already iced significantly.
If we imagine the Great Lakes as a river, the process and timing of icing over seems to make sense.
RiHo08 – While the Great Lakes are part of a huge drainage system and envisioning them as such may help make sense of the process and timing of icing, calling them “but a widening in a river” is geologically wrong. They are products of the last ice age and the rivers that connect them exist because of the lakes and accidents of nature, rather than the lakes forming along some pre-existing river system. Doesn’t make much difference to this discussion, but keep it in mind, as their ability to affect weather systems is much greater than if they were merely “widenings in a river”
If you go back to the home page of the site Lucia linked to, there are temperature transects of each lake, which are pretty neat.
Everything is a cycle. For Lake Michigan record low water levels were set in 1965 then record highs were set in 1986-7 and record lows were approached or set again in 2013. Here is the long term Michigan/Huron water levels.
http://www.glerl.noaa.gov/data/now/wlevels/lowlevels/plot/MichHuron.jpg
Interesting enough, Artic Sea Ice formation is lagging quite a bit behind last year’s level and seems to have plateaued. http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.recent.arctic.png
It is now running 1.2 million sq. km behind the 1979-2008 mean and 1.0 million sq km behind ice levels at the same time for 2012 and 2013. Without a rapid run up this summer could new lows.
I’m beginning to be an overturning circulation skeptic. This cartoon shows wind driven overturning in a lake in the spring that is all the same temperature after the ice melts. Really?
Edit: It seems more plausible that this happens in the fall. As the top layer cools it may get more dense than what’s below it, if the temperature range is right. If diffusion heated the bottom water to >4C during the summer, then the top layer would sink. Combined with wind then there would exist both a horizontal and vertical pressure gradient which would seem to be the key ingredients for such an overturning.
RIH
(from the net) There are two recorded incidences of Lake Ontario completely freezing over (the last in 1934). It’s just by far the least likely to do so because it’s very deep causing it to retain heat and is relatively farther south than the other Great Lakes.
Re: DeWitt Payne (Feb 12 10:45),
Thanks for noting the very stunted accumulation of NH sea ice this year (Cryosphere Today map). I’ve heard and read so many dopey stories by alarmist/warmist journalists, that I’d almost begun to believe the opposite of their Party Line.
But the obvious explanation for “polar vortex” type phenomena is that they are forms of increased heat redistribution, moving it poleward from the mid-latitudes. Consistent with depressed rates of ice formation, at least qualitatively.
I used to track the Great Lakes levels data, but that got boring cause they vary ±0.5%.
The records are almost a hundred years long now. They’re pretty flat, mostly.
I do wonder, though, how the ice cover of the lakes relates to their levels.
Re: ed (Feb 12 13:48),
That’s not guaranteed. Even though the extent and area is running low, PIOMAS ice volume (1000km3) as of 1/31/2014 was up over the previous four years:
1/31/2010 18.861
1/31/2011 17.565
1/31/2012 17.594
1/31/2013 16.843
1/31/2014 18.938
2010 fell off a cliff, as it were, starting in April. That’s when we’ll start to get an idea of how things are going.
The key to the low is not the maximum extent in the winter, it’s mainly the export of multi-year sea ice through the Fram Strait in the spring. Even though the total volume at the end of January in 2013 was the lowest on record, minimum ice volume in 2013 increased over 2012 and the volume anomaly was back to 2010 levels at the beginning of 2014.
Re: 1936 and Niagara Falls.
When I mapped out the temps in Canada in 1936 a few days ago I expected a really hot summer. But it was nothing compared to the cold in Feb 1936 and to a lesser amount January 1936.
(Temps in relation to 1971-2000)
http://sunshinehours.wordpress.com/2014/02/08/extreme-weather-alert-canada-february-1936/
ed
If one follows the Environment Canada site, go back to @ Christmas time (2013) and you will find the following:
Lake Erie iced over first. It is the shallowest (62) feet and the furtherest SOUTH of all the Great Lakes at Latitude 42.2.
Lake Superior iced over next. Lake Superior is the largest, deepest (483 feet average depth), and the one furthest North 47.7.
Lake Huron ice over next completing icing last week. Lake Huron is latitude 44.8 and has an average depth of 195 feet.
Lake Michigan is still not iced over and it is a “blind” pouch where water goes in and then mostly has to evaporates, it has no natural outlet. Its average depth is 279 feet and it is at 44 degrees latitude.
Lake Ontario’s average depth is: 283 feet and located at 43.7 latitude which is North of Lake Erie.
My hypothesis survives: Land surface water heat determines the freezing over of the Great Lakes. When the land surface of the catchment region freezes, there is no more warm water to ride on the Great Lake’s surface; hence, the lake freezes. There is the issue of fresh water being more dense @ 39 F (4 C) but that adds yet another layer of complexity to when a lake will freeze over. including surface water overturning.
Lake Erie is a special case because of its being so shallow, having a rapid transit time even though it is the most Southern of all the Great Lakes.
Lake Sinclair (42 latitude) although not considered one of the Great Lakes, ices over first as it is so shallow (11 feet average depth).
Bob N
Of course you are right about the Great Lakes geological history of formation. That geological history may get in the way of understanding the issue of ice formation. My hypothesis, with its caveats provides a more straight forward explanation for the Great Lakes icing over, and their sequence. I predict that Lake Ontario will ice over last.
RiHo08,
I suspect the freezing sequence is mainly controlled by the relative depths and locations on the different lakes, not by addition of relatively “warm” ground water in the winter months. According to Wikipedia:
“Annually, only about 1% is “new” water originating from rivers, precipitation, and groundwater springs that drain into the lakes. This is balanced by evaporation and drainage, making the level of the lakes historically constant.”
If you consider the deepest lake (superior) is under 500 feet average depth, 1% amounts to 5 feet of ‘new’ water each year. It does not take long to cool 5 feet of relatively warm water. Ice forms at the surface when accumulated heat at depth from summertime solar heating is “used up” and the surface becomes cooler than 4C, where water’s density begins to fall with additional cooling. Until a lake is pretty much a uniform 4C, from near the surface to the bottom, surface freezing is impossible. Now, these lakes are horizontally big (on the order of a thousand times greater horizontal extent than depth), so surface freezing can be localized… a shallower part can certainly start freezing before a deeper part. But there is nothing mysterious about deeper lakes icing over much later than shallow lakes; no special sources of heat are needed to explain it.
Lake retention times (% turnover/year): (compare to SteveF’s reference value of 1%/year for the lakes as a whole)
http://coastwatch.glerl.noaa.gov/statistic/physical.html
Superior: 191 years (0.5%/year)
Michigan: 99 years (1%/year)
Huron: 22 years (5%/year)
Erie: 2.6 years (40%/year)
Ontario: 6 years (16%/year)
I do expect that there is an influence of flow sequence, as well as depth and latitude. Ontario and Michigan are about the same latitude and are both deep, but Michigan is frozen already. I would imagine Ontario bottom water gets much warmer in the summer than Michigan bottom water, due to the greater turnover (and summer temperatures don’t have a cutoff analogous to 32F in the winter).
RIH
The icing of the great lakes has nothing to do with the flow of water between them. Your “theory” is just some idea you seemed to have pulled out of the sky. Go back and analyze how much water is flowing between the lakes compared to their volumes.
Lucia,
I actually did an hour ago what ed just asked Rih but comment is stuck in moderation, can you help.
Or, maybe I should try from this workstation minus the hyperlink.
Lake retention times (% turnover/year): (compare to SteveF’s reference value of 1%/year for the lakes as a whole)
Superior: 191 years (0.5%/year)
Michigan: 99 years (1%/year)
Huron: 22 years (5%/year)
Erie: 2.6 years (40%/year)
Ontario: 6 years (16%/year)
I do expect that there is an influence of flow sequence, as well as depth and latitude. Ontario and Michigan are about the same latitude and are both deep, but Michigan is frozen already. I would imagine Ontario bottom water gets much warmer in the summer than Michigan bottom water, due to the greater turnover (and summer temperatures don’t have a cutoff analogous to 32F in the winter).
Steve F
“But there is nothing mysterious about deeper lakes icing over much later than shallow lakes; no special sources of heat are needed to explain it.”
Lake Erie froze over first followed by Lake Superior freezing over followed by Lake Huron. Small Southern most shallow lake first (Erie), then largest (Superior), deepest and furtherest North a month later followed by a smaller, less deep lake.
Follow the Environment Canada link back to mid-December and the proceed forward to today. Watch day by day which lake froze over first, the next one to freeze over, so on and so forth.
ed
“The icing of the great lakes has nothing to do with the flow of water between them”
You seemed to have misunderstood what I said. The land surface water (the Province of Ontario Canada northern area) is the catchment area for Lake Superior which then goes on to feed the other Great Lakes. Lake Michigan has a water catchment area not only from Lake Superior but also from the states of Wisconsin and Michigan. Lake Huron has a catchment area, again, not only from Superior, but the state of Michigan. The Georgian Bay to Huron’s East does provide some water but not very much and it already is very cold, spring fed, and precipitous shores of rock.
With Lake Huron and Michigan at similar latitudes, the land surface water hypothesis would explain the difference in timing of icing over as Lake Michigan and two land surfaces to supply relatively warm water (in addition to what comes from Lake Superior) and Lake Huron has only one land source, the State of Michigan.
ed
“Go back and analyze how much water is flowing between the lakes compared to their volumes.”
There is little mixing of the land surface waters with the deep “bottom” waters as the warm waters flowing into the cold lake remain on the surface. The volume of melt water into the lake, plus any other land surface contribution to that lake, minus evaporation, is the water volume that exits the lake. With caveats, Lake Superior feeds Lakes Huron & Michigan. Lake Michigan is a dead end, the waters from Superior travels through Lake Huron to Lake Erie and finally Lake Ontario.
The first 40 feet of the lake’s surface would be the mixing layer with a gradient from the surface to the thermocline. The thermocline does vary from lake to lake but is usually around 40 feet. After 40 feet the temperature below is 40 F. From the thermocline on down, the water temperature is fairly constant, dense and cold.
“Your “theory†is just some idea you seemed to have pulled out of the sky.”
I am more than willing to modify or change, discard my hypothesis if you show me evidence contrary to what I have put forward.
“Since the lakes can’t reach 101% frozen”
If we have learned anything from climate science, it is that all things are possible.
RiHo08 (Comment #124281)
February 13th, 2014 at 11:09 am
I think what you say may be true for lake Superior (bottom water never heating up beyond the density mininum). But comparing Superior to Ontario, look at the temperature transects of Ontario currently on the site Lucia linked in the post. There are large vertical sections of temperature at 40F. This would appear to be active mixing which is why it’s not iced over yet. And Lake Michigan has green (42F) water in the middle….busy rising to get chilled, and keeping the center from freezing I think.
bill c
I have been using Environment Canada for ice cover. I used the NOAA site with its Nowcast product. The temperature profile for each Great Lake is as I stated up thread; i.e., 40 feet below surface the temperature is 40 F descending to the bottom.
My hypothesis includes the 40 foot mixing layer with gradient surface down to the thermocline except possibly for Lake Erie.
“And Lake Michigan has green (42F) water in the middle….busy rising to get chilled, and keeping the center from freezing I think.”
The heat in the mixed layer (the first 40 feet surface to thermocline) is probably rising to be cooled. Agreed.
Lake Ontario’s vertical profile suggests the same mixing layer and a “floor” at 40 feet thermocline.
Hence, my hypothesis that warm water is still spilling out of the Great Lakes down Niagara Falls and into Lake Ontario. Once the warm water from above the Falls is mostly gone, then Lake Ontario will freeze over: East to West. We’ll see.
RiHo08 (Comment #124284)
February 13th, 2014 at 1:21 pm
Are you looking at the temperature transects? The 42F water in lake Michigan (~7C) is all the way to the bottom, and concentrated at lower depths. The density gradient is going to cause it to rise. Colder water will flow down the lake bed slopes to take its place. I suspect the same thing was going on a couple weeks ago in Ontario. I just tried to download data but
bill c
I believe you are looking at buoy 45007 in the Southern region of Lake Michigan. Buoy was pulled for the winter so information for the winter really is reflective of the last readings in the Fall.
You are right that the reading is @42 F all the way down which makes me a little suspicious of the functioning of the thermometers. We’ll see this Spring when the ice moves out and the buoy is popped back into the water.
Looking at the other buoy 45002, this shows the thermocline etc.
Maybe the heat from Gary Indiana steel mills effluent riding as slug along the Lake’s bottom is to blame. 🙂 First option, recalibrate and remeasure.
A couple of points from a meteorologist who used to work in a power plant that looked over Lake Ontario. First I will take a bet that Lake Ontario will not freeze over completely. It very rarely gets close and now that we can see the whole lake with satellites I bet we will still see open water at the maximum extent. Previously the observations could not cover the entire lake.
My understanding why Lake Ontario freezes over after Lake Erie does is that the depth of the lakes lets Erie cool faster. The winds associated with lake effect snow do a good job mixing the surface water and because there is less volume in Erie it reaches freezing faster.
I suspect that the reason that Lake Ontario freezes later than the other lakes is more because of the temperature coming from the northwest than the water from the surface. The open water on the upwind lakes warm the air coming down so that by the time it reaches Lake Ontario it is a bit warmer (and also holding more moisture so the lake effect snow is stronger). Lake Superior gets air that has not been modified by any water bodies to the NW while Lake Ontario gets air modified by all the upwind lakes. Note that Lake Erie is frozen now so the lake effect snow downwind of that is much less of an issue. Therefore under my guess the upwind effect on Lake Ontario should be less of an issue now so we will see.
Re: lake effect snow.
Indeed. I’m from Muskoka (two hours north of Toronto). I’m always a bit suspect of my 82 year old father saying “I’ve never seen snow like this before”.
Turns out he is right, though:
http://barrie.ctvnews.ca/record-snowfall-amounts-in-muskoka-and-thornbury-1.1663094
Note that this report is two weeks old, and it has snowed almost every day since…
RIH
Sorry to burst your bubble but Steel mill effluent “sludge” riding along the Lake bottom is not to blame for any heat you are imagining. The water discharge permits for my Steel company are authorized primarily only for rainwater runoff. There is only a tiny amount of cleaned coolant water that is allowed to be discharged into Lake Michigan. I expect that the State of Indiana has equally stringent permits with the other large steel mills along the lake.
Sorry, but dont blame Lake Michigan water temperatures on the Steel mills!
RIH
The Canadian side of Niagara Falls never freezes over. When you say:
“Once the warm water from above the Falls is mostly gone, then Lake Ontario will freeze over”. How is that ever going to happen when the water which is warm enough to flow does not ever become “mostly gone”? How does that have anything to do with freezing Lake Ontario?
Ice cover on Lake Ontario is a function of air temperature and wind patterns not how warm the water is coming from Niagara falls.
ed
You are right of course that a slug of sludge is not to blame for the warming of Lake Michigan. Just a bit of off humor.
With regards to the Canadian side of Niagara Falls, that is some swift water flow. In addition, the hydro-electric intakes and discharges are on the Canadian side as well as the pump reservoir storage hydro-electric site.
My contention would be that the turbulence from the water falling over the falls as well as the hydro-electric intake and discharge would limit ice formation until further down river and until it got closer to Lake Ontario.
Further, the heat energy of Great Lakes water comes in part from the vast Great Lakes watershed which encompasses the Northern & major portions of Southern Province of Ontario Canada, Eastern portions of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Northern Ohio & Pennsylvania, Upstate New York. When those watersheds begin to freeze as is happening this year, the water reaching the Great Lakes has less heat energy allowing further ice formation.
Given the above, my hypothesis is that as the watersheds have frozen, there is less heat energy entering with Lake Superior, even being the largest and deepest, frozen over after lake Erie. I believe Lake Erie freezes over first because it is shallow and the water heat energy flows beneath the ice rapidly and does not linger long enough to melt the ice. My contention is that there is still heat energy in the water flowing over Niagara Falls, down the Niagara River into Lake Ontario. That heat energy from all the contributing Great Lakes then must be dissipated by evaporation before icing of Lake Ontario is complete. Hence, my prediction that Lake Ontario will ice over in its Eastern region first as it enters the St. Lawrence River and will ice over from East to West near the Niagara River.
I agree that ambient air temperatures and wind play a dominant role in lakes icing over. If they were the only factors, the most Southern Great Lake, Lake Erie should freeze over last. It is just that this great fresh water river called the Great Lakes will carry the heat energy it has accumulate from its watershed to its exit in the Atlantic. The beginning of the watershed will freeze first at its most Northern location and that is what happened in Northern Ontario with Lake Superior icing over and so on down the water’s journey to the sea.
I stand ready to learn and modify my hypothesis if you have evidence.
RiHo08
I’m not sure what you mean. The turbulence is associated with dissipation of mechanical energy to heat. But water in the center of the two lakes is pretty still, and the mechanical energy that is being dissipated is mostly the amount associated with the elevation change. That’s roughly 200 ft… right?
So if the water is in a still vessel above and tumbles to a stilling pool below we would expect the temperature to rise this much:
δ T = g * h/ Cp = 9.81 m/s^2 * 60 m / (4.2 KJ /kg*K) = 0.14 K.
Near 0C that might make a difference, but it’s not a big deal. And the effect of the hydroelectrive generation is to convert the useable mechanical energy into electricity. So that water has a lesser temperature rise because some that energy goes into creating electricity.
Meanwhile, the turbulent region near the falls means lots of contact with air– which if colder than the water will remove heat from the water. The heat transfer could very well matter much more than any conversion of potential energy (g h) into thermal energy . So, I don’t see the “turbulence” as significantly warming the water. But in any event, the effect of the hydroelectric generators is to remove mechanical energy which would otherwise be converted into thermal energy. So that’s robbing from the 0.15K temperature rise one might attribute to the turbulence.
Or is your point that since only melted water flows, whatever is following over the falls is warmer than freezing. So, that not yet frozen water has to cool before Lake Ontario freezes? That might be true, but it would be true of all lakes downstream of any other lake. So I can’t imagine it’s a huge effect.
Your idea of that there is a “Great Lakes River” has already been debunked in earlier comments. So far your theory is based on a theory and has ignored all the contrary evidence others have provided.
By the way, it’s not so much loss of energy to the cold air, it’s that the colder, drier air allows energy to radiate away from the water faster when the sun is below the horizon. The Gulf of St. Lawrence has more ice than last year too.
Lucia
δ T = g * h/ Cp = 9.81 m/s^2 * 60 m / (4.2 KJ /kg*K) = 0.14 K.
I’m afraid I wasn’t clear. I was not addressing falling water & turbulent flow as a thermodynamic issue, rather, that the mechanical act of falling over the falls and the churning through the turbines was creating eddies which disturbed the water sufficiently that there was no ice formation. I certainly accede you position about still water in the center of the lakes is waiting evaporation.
My hypothesis is that Great Lakes icing over is a function of the water flowing into them; from their individual catchment areas as well as the waters from the Great Lakes above their elevation. Lake Superior will ice over when its Northern Ontario catchment region freezes no longer draining water into Superior. Lake Superior drains into Lakes Michigan & Huron. Lake Michigan is a pouch with no natural outlet so the water it receives from Superior and from the two catchment areas of Wisconsin and Michigan generally hangs around waiting for evaporative cooling. Lake Huron receives whatever warm surface water from Superior, adds in land surface water from Michigan to the West, Tittabawassee River draining vast farm land, and the Saugeen River draining Southern Ontario’s bread basket to the West. East and West, the catchment areas freeze, Lake Superior freezes over, hence, Lake Huron freezes over. The water from Huron travels to Lake Erie which is already frozen over because it is shallow. Water into Erie travels pretty quick under its ice cover and heads over Niagara Falls. The catchment areas of Ohio like the Cuyahoga and the Maumee Rivers are relatively short rivers; hence, not very much land surface water to add to the heat energy of the water passing along from the Great Lakes above: Superior & Huron.
Once over Niagara Falls, the water still retains heat energy which is flowing into Western Lake Ontario. Lake Ontario’s catchment regions are relatively limited: Genese River from upstate New York, and a handful of minor tributaries to its Northern Canadian shores.
I repeat: I am not saying that the mechanical energy of water flowing over Niagara Falls nor the flow through turbines has a net warming of the water into the Niagara River. Rather, the turbulent eddies limit when water will ice over.
“…since only melted water flows, whatever is following over the falls is warmer than freezing. So, that not yet frozen water has to cool before Lake Ontario freezes?”
YES.
The pretty pictures of ice covering Niagara Falls stems from the mist produced by the falling water which freezes.
I seemed to have gotten too rapped up in addressing “ed” around the issue of why Western Lake Ontario is still ice free.
Did I address you issues? Of course, I may have misunderstood.
RiHo08,
Yes. At least now I think I know what you mean. That said, I’d have to see a bounding calculation to think your idea is realistic. I think to think it’s not given the volume of the lakes relative to the flow rate.
Also, does the fact that water is churning prevent ice formation? It could if warmer than 32F water is mixing with 32F water (or ice water.) But does the fact of churning itself prevent ice formation? I don’t happen to know– but why should it? All the ‘flow’ stuff is at such a macroscale relative to the size of molecules that I really don’t see why it ought to prevent ice forming.
The falls themselves have frozen.
Lucia
“That said, I’d have to see a bounding calculation to think your idea is realistic.”
I am not quite sure I understand “bounding calculation”. Is that all the heat energy of the watersheds that drain into the Great Lakes?
“I think to think it’s not given the volume of the lakes relative to the flow rate.”
I am only speaking of the upper surface, the mixing layer, not the whole volume of the lake. The mixing layer is from the water’s surface to the thermocline. The thermocline’s “floor” has a surface to floor temperature gradient down to @ 4 C.
“does the fact that water is churning prevent ice formation?”
I believe the churning prevents ice formation down to some degree of water temperature where the kinetic energy no longer overcomes water freezing.
“The falls themselves have frozen.”
I believe the falls freeze because the water in the pond above freezes first. The pretty pictures of Niagara Falls reflects mist freezing and not the running water itself. To prevent one’s pipes from freezing one needs to open the spicot and let the water drip out. The kinetic energy of flowing water overcomes to some degree the temperature of freezing.
Kinetic energy of flowing water.
No
It’s just that water that is moving is less likely to be as cold as water that is sitting there freezing away because it’s come from somewhere warmer , like pipes in the ground.
RiHo08: If you follow the accident of nature downstream you’ll find the Gulf of St. Lawrence. From the 35yrs of data I can clearly see a 60+ year cycle:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/recent365.anom.region.3.html
Yes, heat energy in and out of each lake but relative to heat transfer from other know sources– like conduction and convection from the large flattish surface of the lack and so on. You want an estimate of how big each is.
When doing your estimate, you can consider whatever volumes you think are relevant and say way. But quantifiying is useful. It can turn out the effect that “seems to you” important is real but only amounts to 1% of heat fluxes.
I know you believe it because you already claimed this effect happens. What I’m asking is: You believe this based on …. what? The “what” is what I’m asking. Is there info from chemistry? chemical engineering? Physics? What?
Is this “rotten” ice?
Am I the only one who hears these lyrics when reading this thread: “Farther below Lake Ontario/Takes in what Lake Erie can send her”.
Well I’m living on the west side of lake Michigan, less than an hour’s drive away from shore. The downwind side from where Lucia currently resides. We are right in line with all of that lake-effect snow and it has been a beast this year. In the last few weeks, the snow has tapered off a bit, perhaps due to reduced lake effect but now we have to wait for the stuff to melt this spring. Looking out the window, it is hard to imagine any green underneath that mess.
west side?
Without calculation the kinetic velocity of flowing water is much less than the mean molecular velocity at 273 K.
Churning is additional energy stored as a bulk velocity that doesn’t cause additional molecular interaction and therefore is energy that is not part of the temperature. If the churning had fully settled out to the molecular scale, the water would be at a higher temperature. Therefore, you might say that storing that energy as a form of churning would increase the rate of freezing over water that had the same energy state without churning. 😀
East side – sorry. I inserted the word “lake” during an edit.
Lucia
“You believe this based on …. what? The “what†is what I’m asking. Is there info from chemistry? chemical engineering? Physics? What?”
I’m afraid I have allowed myself to incorporate heresay into my thinking. From Jeff Andresen, associate professor in Michigan State University’s geography department who also is the State of Michigan’s climatologist…”Lake Ontario’s depth and the churning caused by Niagara Falls mean that it needs (a) long stretch of exceptionally cold weather to freeze.” I don’t think the churning effect (friction) lasts all the way across the Lake, but it does have a local effect seen immediately downstream of the Falls on the Niagara River.
Going back to my dripping pipe analogy, the water is indeed warmer so that the warmer water keeps moving even though the pipe is colder. This is exactly my point about the freezing of the Great Lakes which depends upon when the watershed waters become sufficiently frozen and no longer supplies significant relatively warm water to the lake. The stream in the watershed is flowing, only under the ice. The streams water volume is reduced. The watershed ends where the tundra, frozen all year around, begins.
There is such a thing as the “frost line” which is about 3 feet under the surface of land in the mid-latitudes. Water below the frost line usually does not freeze although with some bitterly cold weather, the frost line can go much lower.
Another thing, just like inside an igloo, the snow keeps a blanket on the land surface so the temperature below the snow stays warmer than the outside air temperature.
Regarding quantifying and developing a bounding calculation…hmmm…there seems to be a lot of moving parts making calculating somewhat challenging. Maybe there are some simplifications that be used. Talking with a hydrologist might help, that is, if they haven’t all retired. 🙂
RiHo08
Since this is a serious issue, mixing of a top layer of a large volume of water would slow freezing of a that layer when considering a lake type volume. Not everything froze at the falls, just the bit we see on top so mixing would delay freezing.
Jeff Id
I followed you until:
“Therefore, you might say that storing that energy as a form of churning would increase the rate of freezing over water that had the same energy state without churning.”
moving water is kinetic energy? not translated into molecular interaction? not friction and warmer water? churning water at the same temperature freezing before still water at the same temperature?
I am sure I am getting my vectors confused.
RiHo08
But this doesn’t support your theory about heat from the watersheds and so on. The “depth” is something others have been pointing to– it takes a long time to freeze a large volume of water– especially if it’s large volume with low surface area: that is deep.
And issue about the ‘churning’ has nothing to do with dissippation of energy. It is simply an observation that this results in mixing of the already warm water in the lake with any surface water that might have cooled due to contact with cold air. So, basically, that quote supports what everyelse has been suggesting.
Bounding calculations always require simplifications. That’s what makes them “bounding”.
That fact is, your idea about what’s going on seems implausible. Of course the temperature of water entering the lake has some effect– but it’s a small amount compared to the volume of the lake. And there is a large surface area permitting heat transfer. And it appears you are misunderstanding what your one source is saying. That quote is consistent with what everyone other than you suggests is true.
Lucia
“The “depth†is something others have been pointing to– it takes a long time to freeze a large volume of water– especially if it’s large volume with low surface area: that is deep.”
None of the Great Lakes freezes to depth. If you look at the Environment Canada site, marine and then Great Lakes you will see that the surface is frozen over, not to depth (which is fast ice colored in gray which is around the periphery and in some bays and very shallow areas).
Again. Lake Erie’s surface froze over first, the most Southern but shallowest. It also has a limited watershed.
The next lake’s surface to freeze over was Lake Superior which has the greatest surface area of all the Great Lakes, is the deepest on average by more than 200 feet compared to the next deepest lake Michigan at 278 feet Lake Superior has the largest volume. Lake Superior, according to your statement regarding lake volume should be the LAST to freeze over. The observation of Lake Superior freezing over before Huron, Michigan or Ontario suggests that other factors are involved, like heat energy from its watershed. Lake Superior’s watershed froze early in the winter; hence Lake Superior’s surface froze over early in the winter as well.
Those who say that warm water is flowing to the “bottom” of the Great Lakes; i.e., that the flow of water from the Niagara River is flowing to the bottom of Lake Ontario defies physics. Warmer water stays on the “surface”. In this case, the surface is the mixing layer defined by its lower limits by the thermocline.
“Of course the temperature of water entering the lake has some effect– but it’s a small amount compared to the volume of the lake.”
The volume of the lakes, their depths and the surface area of the thermocline that provides potential heat transfer, is mitigated in part by the density of the water at 39 F or 4 C. The warmer water in the mixed layer above the thermocline is less dense; hence, stays above the thermocline. Evaporation at the lake’s surface is then subjected to the ambient temperature and wind and cools. From the lake’s surface to the thermocline, is a gradient of temperatures, warmer on top, cooler on bottom. Warmer waters at the surface mean no surface freezing. Below the thermocline, the temperature remains pretty close to 40 F all the way to the bottom. That is what the NOAA site you provided says.
I do not agree with Jeff Andresen regarding the churning effects at Niagara Falls impacts Lake Ontario for 2/3s of its length.
Looking at the NOAA site, at the Environment Canada site and watching the Great Lakes’ surfaces freeze over sequentially from before Christmas on to today, I believe the sequence of which Great Lake froze over first, second, third, fourth and awaiting Lake Ontario and in particular its East to West sequence, supports my hypothesis.
I can envision Lake Ontario having an ice jam at the mouth of the St Lawrence River inhibiting the flow of surface water, but then we would expect that Lake Ontario’s water level measurement begin to rise fairly rapidly.
Ice breakers are being employed to keep the St Clair and Detroit Rivers open to prevent ice jams which may lead to flooding along the stretch from Huron to Lake Erie. Ice breakers are used in Chicago, around Buffalo NY for similar reasons. I would expect that ice breakers would be used to keep the St. Lawrence River mouth from developing ice jams.
RiHo08
No one claimed they do. Nevertheless, depth is a factor in the amount of time it takes for the lake to freeze.
Yes. This observation supports the “depth matters” theory.
No. Because no one claimed it is the only factor. I certainly did not. Being further north or in a cooler location matters too. Of course it’s “watershed” is cooler– because it is further north than other watersheds. But the fact that Lake Superior’s water shed is also cold doesn’t tell you anything about whether the heat loss for the surface matters more or less than the temperature of water coming in from the “watershed” . To show that you need to do a bounding calculation, which you seem reluctant to do.
This does not “defy physics”. The falling water has velocity which it gains as it falls. Because it has downward velocity when it reaches the lack, that water tend to travel to the bottom unless slowed. You could set up a little waterfall mock up in your house, put colored water in the top and see what happens.
I suggest you do a calculation to estimate the effect. 🙂
I’m a bit confused. First: you brought this source into the conversation and quoted him. You seemed to be suggesting his notions were ones you were drawing from. Now you are telling me you disagree with something he said… somewhere. I’m not a big follower of Jeff Andresen, so I have no idea what he said how much of the area of Ontario is affected by the falls churning.
Really? They use icebreakers to prevent flooding? On which river?
Note
http://video.dailycaller.com/Polar-vortex-brings-out-icebreaker-tugboat-25513000#.Uv-0BV5RdgI
here they explain they are breaking ice to permit firefighters to get through in emergencies. This is not “for flooding”.
@Steve McIntyre #124243: “the previous Niagara Falls freezings was in 1936, also presumably due to a polar vortex, though the term wasn’t used then. The following summer of 1936 was extremely hot (1,1A) with 2012 in many ways. In both cases, the heat wave was attributed to a stationary high pressure zone over North America. A cold winter doesn’t mean that we won’t have a hot summer”
May I suggest you borrow “Dynamic Analysis of Weather and Climate, Springer”, the Leroux’s 2010 book from your friend Ross and study it… And you’ll realize that the same mechanism of lower layers atmospheric circulation (rapid mode) is at work creating anticyclonic agglutinations provoking heatwaves in summer and cold spells in winter. Leroux’s work predicted the weather we have seen develop for the past 40 years and his explanations are luminous.
Has ice coverage peaked at 88.42%?
From NOAA Great Lakes Statistics
Great Lakes Average Ice Concentration
Re Water freezing & kinetic energy
Falling water will increase in kinetic energy while declining gravitational potential energy. On dissipation, kinetic energy converts to heat. See the Joule experiment showing the mechanical equivalent of heat.
Here’s a quick and dirty bounding calculation:
Water at 4C using an emissivity of 0.98 radiates 323.4 W/m² and 307.4 W/m² from 100-1500cm-1. Mid-latitude winter clear sky downward radiation at a surface temp of 4C from 100-1500cm-1 is 222.9 W/m² (MODTRAN). That’s a net loss of 84.5 W/m². Given the low sun angle and the relatively few hours of daylight, the night time loss of energy is going to dominate. I seriously doubt that the relatively small amount of kinetic energy introduced by Niagara Falls is going to put a serious dent in that number unless there is 100% cloud cover nearly 100% of the time.
HaroldW (Comment #124393)
February 15th, 2014 at 9:11 am
“Am I the only one who hears these lyrics when reading this thread…”
Evidently our host is a fan as well:
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2010/the-winds-of-november-come-early/
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2009/cru-hack-news-ten-links/
This* is consistent with global warming.
*”This” can mean anything, since nothing has yet happened which is inconsistent with global warming, apparently.
Lucia
Your last part first re: Chicago and ice breakers
“here they explain they are breaking ice to permit firefighters to get through in emergencies. This is not “for floodingâ€.”
The tug is used as an ice breaker to keep the water intake and Chicago River entrance ice broken up. The fireboat is pictured and I am sure that plays a role in keeping the Chicago River’s mouth ice loose.
However, the Chicago River is the inlet to the Illinois Canal which uses 2 billion gallons a day every day of Lake Michigan water to flush Chicago’s waste effluent down the Canal to the Mississippi River. An ice dam at the mouth of the Chicago River would block that water flowing into the Illinois Canal and its associated Chicago pollution which would seem to besmirch Mark Twain’s legacy. I believe the news report was incomplete as many Chicagoans may not like to be reminded of their 100 + year habit of waste water dumping. 🙁
“The falling water has velocity which it gains as it falls. Because it has downward velocity when it reaches the lack, that water tend to travel to the bottom unless slowed. You could set up a little waterfall mock up in your house, put colored water in the top and see what happens.”
My kitchen table model would need to include a whirlpool down stream of the falls with a 90 degree right hand turn into yet another bend in the stream to a widening of 3 times the whirlpool exit width. Not much churning energy left to make it to Lake Ontario let along to have the River water plunge to the Lake’s bottom.
During the summer, there are sailboat regattas as the Niagara River exits into Lake Ontario. After the races, the sailboats sail up river to their moorings. The River current is not very pronounced.
Using the NOAA site data, the temperature vertical profile for all the Great Lakes, the thermocline in Lake Superior has one buoy where the thermocline begins at 15 meters. Lake Ontario’s thermocline begins 25 m. Lake Superior has vastly more surface area, is considerably deeper, and yet below their thermoclines, the water temperatures are similar, around 39 F, the water density is greatest.
The notion that Lake Superior froze over before Lake Ontario because Superior is further North stretches the imagination since Superior is at 47.7 Latitude and Ontario is at 43.7. Really, 4 degrees latitude difference is a significant cause of first vs last and counting?
My contention is that the watershed water temperature determines the timing of Great Lakes freezing their surfaces. Lake Ontario is the recipient of all the water above Niagara Falls and its associated water temperatures, such that Lake Ontario can’t freeze over until the warmer water has been cooled and/or passed on to the St.Lawrence River. This warmer water is subjected to the cold temperatures and wind leading to evaporative cooling. The warmer water from Niagara River keeps renewing the surface water delaying further Ontario’s eventual icing over. The observation of Ontario freezing from East (at its exit) to West from the Niagara River suggests this mechanism also.
RiHo08 re “Lake Sinclair:”
Outflow from Lake Huron is into the St. Clair River, which flows into Lake St. Clair, which flows into the Detroit River, which flows into Lake Erie.
I suspect Lake Michigan would have slightly more net outflow through the Straits of Mackinac if Greater Chicago didn’t take water out and excrete it into the Mississippi River.
nutso fasst
I agree. If not for the Chicago Sanitary Canal (now referred to as the Illinois Canal), water from Lake Superior, at least 2 billion gallons a day, would flow into Lake Huron and follow the course you mentioned.
Lake Michigan also has the two states of Wisconsin and Michigan to provide watershed waters delaying Lake Michigan from freezing over completely as Lake Michigan has no natural exit except through the Mackinac Straits and into its companion lake Lake Huron.
Huh? I live in the Western suburbs of Chicago and I can assure you that no “remider” is needed because people are proud about the wonder of the Canal.
Sure. Plus Lake Superior is in the middle of the continent, which aggravates the issue. I live near Chicago and am familiar with the whole continental climate issue. So.. uh.. yeah. Two factors make Minnesota/Michigan colder than Ontario.
Out of curiosity: if you don’t think being further north affect heat transfer from the surface of the water on Lake Superior, what do you think causes the water shed to be colder?
I think you are wrong. But even if you are correct, what causes the Lake Superior watershed to get cold. Leprechauns?
Lucia
“Sure. Plus Lake Superior is in the middle of the continent, which aggravates the issue.”
Lake Superior at 87.7 longitude and Lake Ontario at 80 longitude. 7.7 degrees longitude causes the first to last freeze up?
“I think you are wrong. But even if you are correct, what causes the Lake Superior watershed to get cold. Leprechauns?”
I must admit, I hadn’t considered Leprechauns. Thank you for heads up. 🙂 Science moves in mysterious ways.
There is very little elevated geography like mountains to deflect an Alberta Clipper from barreling though the mid-west bringing Arctic cold to the region. The only geographical differences are the flat land and the flat Great Lakes themselves. A change in the Jet Stream diving down into the Southeastern region brings headline of ice storms and sprinkles of snow flakes to Atlanta. But the real cold, the minus minus kind, crosses the International border setting record cold for International Falls Minnasota minus 40 below F or C. Add the wind chill and minus 56 F below is real cold, enough to freeze the ground, and streams, and whatever else is subject to its icey touch.
Our friend’s son, who works in the lumber industry in the boreal forests 200 miles North of Thunder Bay, says the ground has frozen earlier this year than at any time in the recent past according to lumberjacks and truckers. The ground froze and the cold and snow came right from the Arctic. No mystery as to why the watershed of Lake Superior froze, it was damn cold.
The answer for watershed freezing? no Leprechauns, the jet stream done it, in the Mid-West, with a hammer. Bang. Elementary my dear Watson.
Frozen-lake-effect snow. 1977
http://members.shaw.ca/wellandwx/blizzard77.htm
G’day Richy,
I got your call for hydrological back up from Judy Curry – unfortunately my trusty steed <a href="Link text“>Shibboleth is allergic to cold and decided to stay in Central Queensland where we have heard of snow and ice but don’t really believe it exists. Despite yet another ‘moon landing’ type conspiracy from NASA – created presumably by contract with DreamWorks.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-BbPBg3vj8&feature=player_embedded
But entering into the spirit of things – just like with Santa Claus – I suggest that we forget the polar vortex and look more closely at the Northern Annular Mode – otherwise known as the Arctic Oscillation – as a more proximate cause of ‘snow’ and ‘ice’.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/daily_ao_index/ao_index.html
While the more recent negative excursions have had dramatic impacts on ‘snow’ and ‘ice’ in the US – the earlier dominant positive mode pushes enough ‘ice’ out through Fram Strait sufficiently to influence the summer minimum. So my estimate for hypothetical Arctic September ‘ice’ coverage – in a moderate El Nino -is something that might challenge record lows – but say 4.5 million square kilometres.
But as long as we are being hypothetical – perhaps the water can actually be frozen as frazil ice but still be moving.
Robert I Ellison
Chief Hydrologist
Robert I Ellison Chief Hydrologist
Thank you for Riding to the Rescue in spite of your reluctant steed Sibboleth.
We have had 56 inches of “DreamWorks” conspiracy snow so far this year. 51 inches for the year is normal and 95 inches is the record.
It would appear that a better understanding of the Northern Annular Mode would go a long way in anticipating and predicting the “…I remember when…” Arctic cold and snowy winters. Such understanding might also help municipalities budget for more road salt, overtime for snow plow crews, and the Coast Guard budget and sequentially locate their ice breakers on the Great Lakes. Lake Erie first, then Lake Superior, Huron, Michigan and last but not least Ontario.
Again, Thank You. We’ll be in Sydney in June. Please NO snow.