The winter of 2013-2014 was a remarkably harsh, cold winter throughout much of the upper midwest, resulting in record low average temperatures and high snowfall amounts. One of the interesting and potentially important consequences of this anomalously cold winter is the high amounts of ice formed on the US/Canadian Laurentian Great Lakes. While all of the lakes experienced anomalously high levels of ice, Lake Superior was a true standout. In most years, Lake Superior does not freeze over completely. In very cold years, Lake Superior might be frozen over completely for a few days in the late winter, but this past year Lake Superior spent nearly all of February and March completely frozen over. In early May, the lake was still over 50% ice-covered. This situation presents a unique opportunity to better understand the implications of the anomalous ice conditions for the lake for subsequent summer and fall. Given the long term trend towards lower ice cover on Lake Superior (and rivers and lakes around the world), an opportunity to study such extreme conditions and their consequences may not occur again in the foreseeable future.
Intellectual Merit: A growing body of research acknowledges the strong connection in deep, temperate lakes between winter ice cover and lake thermal conditions for most of the rest of the year. A short extension of an on-going deployment of three open-lake moorings in Lake Superior through the summer of 2014 following several years when ice coverage levels have been relatively low represents an opportunity to significantly extend the dynamic range of our understanding of the role that ice plays.
Broader Impacts: As part of the observational work, the principal investigator will make the additional ship time associated with this project available to the wider scientific community and share the collected data in order to have a wider, interdisciplinary perspective on the impacts of the record-breaking ice levels. Several community-building exercises will be developed to use the high-ice year as a gauge of the current level of understanding and two graduate students would receive training in taking and interpreting field observations.
