By Xinhua,
Washington : Russian and American scientists have discovered that the rising temperature of Lake Baikal, the world’s largest lake located in freezing Siberia, shows that this region is responding strongly to global warming.
The research team reported their results Thursday on-line in the journal Global Change Biology. “Warming of this isolated but enormous lake is a clear signal that climate change has affected even the most remote corners of our planet,” said Stephanie Hampton, a leading author of the study.
“Our research relies on a 60-year data set, collected in Lake Baikal by three generations of a single family of Siberian scientists,” said another leading author Marianne Moore.
The data on Lake Baikal reveals “significant warming of surface waters and long-term changes in the food web of the world’s largest, most ancient lake,” write the researchers in their paper.
Increases in water temperature (1.21C since 1946), chlorophyll A (300 percent since 1979), and an influential group of zooplankton grazers (335 percent since 1946) have important implications for nutrient cycles and food web dynamics.
With its unparalleled biological diversity, Lake Baikal boasts 2500 plant and animal species, with most found nowhere else in the world. The lake contains 20 percent of the world’s freshwater. It is the world’s deepest lake as well as its oldest — 25 million years old.
Now, the scientists conclude that the lake joins other large lakes, including Superior, Tanganyika and Tahoe, in showing warming trends.
“But,” they note, “temperature changes in Lake Baikal are particularly significant as a signal of long-term regional warming.”