The New York Times [1] released an article Tuesday explaining how the water in Lake Baikal is rapidly warming. Back in 1945, Dr. Kozhov began keeping track of the water temperature, clarity, and track the plant and animal plankton species as deep as 2,400 feet of the water of Lake Baikal, the ancient Siberian lake that is the deepest and largest body of fresh water on earth.

 

 

His daughters Olga M. Kozhova, and Lyubov Izmesteva, joined the project,the three of them kept at it over the years, producing an extraordinary record of the lake and its health.

 

Now Dr. Izmesteva and scientists in the United States have analyzed the data and concluded that the water in Lake Baikal is rapidly warming. After reviewing the data, Stephanie E. Hampton [2] of the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis at the University of California, Santa Barbara said “Even in the spring, summer and fall, this is tough,” she said. “In the winter to go out a mile and a half on the ice and break through it to take water samples, in a year-round effort for 60 years, is pretty amazing to me. Every time I think about it I am humbled.”

 

Lake Baikal’s enormous volume and unusual water circulation patterns would buffer the effects of global warming [3].Surface waters in Lake Baikal are getting warmer, on average by about 0.4 degrees Fahrenheit every decade. At a depth of about 75 feet, the increase is about 0.2 degrees per decade.