Lake ice thickness and duration related to climate change (of course)

 

One of the lesser-publicized dangers of global warming in northern climes:

Thin ice.

Don't crack: Deteriorating safety on frozen lakes in a warming world

"The conclusion of the study is straightforward, namely that global warming will make lake ice much less safe. This is likely to affect indigenous communities in the Arctic as well as regional economies, where people rely on ice roads as a means for fast and comparatively cheap transportation and supply during winter. Thinning future ice-conditions also threatens unique lake ecosystems that have adapted to recurring frozen lake conditions over tens of thousands of years.

"Our results demonstrate that the duration of safe ice over the next 80 years will shorten by 2-3 weeks depending on the future warming level. In regions where lakes are used as ice roads to transport heavy goods and supplies, the number of days with safe ice conditions will decline by more than 90%, even for a moderate warming of 1.5°C above early 20th Century conditions," says Dr. Lei Huang, corresponding author of the study and former postdoctoral researcher at the IBS Center for Climate Physics (ICCP), in Busan, South Korea."