Open AccessArctic lakes show strong decadal trend in earlier spring ice-out
Author(s) -
Tereza Šmejkalová,
Mary Edwards,
Jadunandan Dash
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
scientific reports
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.24
H-Index - 213
ISSN - 2045-2322
DOI - 10.1038/srep38449
Subject(s) - circumpolar star , phenology , arctic , environmental science , physical geography , climatology , arctic ice pack , spring (device) , the arctic , geography , oceanography , ecology , geology , biology , mechanical engineering , engineering
The timing of the seasonal freeze-thaw cycle of arctic lakes affects ecological processes and land-atmosphere energy fluxes. We carried out detailed ice-phenology mapping of arctic lakes, based on daily surface-reflectance time series for 2000–2013 from MODIS at 250 m spatial resolution. We used over 13,300 lakes, area >1 km 2 , in five study areas distributed evenly across the circumpolar Arctic — the first such phenological dataset. All areas showed significant trends towards an earlier break-up, stronger than previously reported. The mean shift in break-up start ranged from −0.10 days/year (Northern Europe) to −1.05 days/year (central Siberia); the shift in break-up end was between −0.14 and −0.72 days/year. Finally, we explored the effect of temperature on break-up timing and compared results among study areas. The 0 °C isotherm shows the strongest relationship (r = 0.56–0.81) in all study areas. If the trend in early break-up continues, rapidly changing ice phenology will likely generate significant, arctic-wide impacts.