Climate Change and the Great Lakes

1733 Words7 Pages
Climate change has recently become a hot topic among political circles in recent years. But, how has it been changing? Increasing temperature? Change in weather patterns? What do these climate changes entail? And how will they affect different ecosystems? These are some of the questions that are examined on a much smaller, finite scale. Specifically, this essay will examine the affects of climate change on the ecosystem of the Laurentian Great Lakes. We will begin by stating the climate changes that have occurred in the Great Lakes region over the past 40 years and what changes are predicted to occur in the future. Next, we will look at how these changes will affect phytoplankton and zooplankton, the basis of aquatic life. Finally, we will examine how these climate changes will affect the fish population, a large portion of the life in the Great Lakes. Through the analysis of plankton and fish, we will show that the Great Lake’s ecosystem will be unlikely to be negatively affected. This means that a species will likely not die out due to climate change, although major changes to the current ecosystem may occur. The climate in the Great Lakes region is affected by two major sources, natural ones (like the lakes themselves) and human ones. Over the past few decades, the temperature in this region has shown an increasing trend. For example, the temperature range over the past thirty years have been “near average to somewhat warmer than average.” This increased temperature is in spite of the fact that the Great Lakes are large bodies of water, meaning they naturally resist increasing and decreasing temperatures. Also, the “hottest months in recorded history” have occurred in the past twenty years, while cold waves have seen a decrease (with the exception of a few extreme colds in the 1990s). In recent years, the last spring freeze has also been happening earlier, with
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