Climate change is already warming the oceans and melting ice, but new research indicates higher temperatures is having an adverse affect on the world's lakes.
Published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, the new study included data from 235 lakes worldwide over a span of 25 years.
"We found that ice-covered lakes, including Canadian lakes, are warming twice as fast as air temperatures and the North American Great Lakes are among the fastest warming lakes in the world," study lead author Sapna Sharma, a biologist at York University, said in a press release.
Representing approximately half the Earth's freshwater supply, the lakes are getting warmer by 0.61 degrees Fahrenheit per decade. Among the problems warming lakes pose is an increase in algal blooms that are known to decrease oxygen in the water and harm fish.
"Society depends on surface water for the vast majority of human uses," study co-author Stephanie Hampton, director of Washington State University's Center for Environmental Research, Education and Outreach, said in another press release. "Not just for drinking water, but manufacturing, for energy production, for irrigation of our crops. Protein from freshwater fish is especially important in the developing world.
"We want to be careful that we don't dismiss some of these lower rates of change," she said. "In warmer lakes, those temperature changes can be really important. They can be just as important as a higher rate of change in a cooler lake."
