Lake Links – January 2006 Edition
Our next meeting is this coming Monday, January 23 at 6:30 PM
Porter County Administration Building, 155 Indiana Ave. Valparaiso
Third Floor Lunchroom * Public welcome * Pizza served
The Newsletter of the Valparaiso Chain of Lakes Watershed Group, Inc.
Our mission is to protect and maintain our lakes and surrounding environs through education, conservation, pollution monitoring,
research, and invasive species control. We are committed to waste reduction, recycling and the use of best land-use practices to ensure
that our lakes remain quality habitats for fish, wildlife, and human recreational use.
Minutes of October 17th meeting
In attendance: Dick and Jane Fryer, George E. Smolka, Mike De St. Jean, Kevin Breitzke, Craig
Clark, Marge Hefner, John and Kathleen Van Aradel, Sue Beach, Annimarie Rini, Gary
Connors, Kenneth Nelson, Donald Koetke, Duane Davision, Tom Banaszak, Jim Cullen, Harry
and Arlene Lynch, Tim Cole
Treasure’s Report was read and approved. All funds from Silver Lake Grant and donations
have been disbursed for Silver Lake protection initiatives. Remaining balance is $ 2,823.59.
Minutes of previous meeting were corrected and revised. The minutes as published in the
“Internet Edition of Lake Links” were approved.
Rogers Lakewood Plantings – Native plantings have been largely taken over by turf grass and
need to be burned. Steve Martinson has agreed to do the burn once we remove the fence (which
should be done after November 1st by Jim Rowe). Sandy O’Brien will supervise more seeding
and predicts the plot will eventually turn out well.
Storm Water/ Erosion – Flint Lake Village/ Hampton Subdivision – Walt received reports of
severe silt and construction erosion flowing into the ditch leading into Emerald
Pond which leads to Flint Lake. Walt called VLACD, Bob Coolman, and the owner of the
subdivision. After several visits it was determined that water was escaping from the site through
a discharge pipe from the site. Bob Coolman said that Marshall Excavating Company neglected
to install a fabric filter on the face of a sheet of plywood that covered the exit pipe. He said they
would get it installed immediately. Kevin Breitzke stated that Bob Coolman and the Marshall
Company have been sensitive to environmental issues and try to remedy problems quickly.
Water Quality Testing – The V.U. students were not in attendance but should provide final
report at next meeting. Mike De St. Jean described the testing trips on which he helped out. He
also asked questions about phragmites which resulted in much advice from several people.
Treasured Chain of Lakes Book – Mrs. Rowe is concerned about the slow pace of progress on
the book. Jim and Walt will talk to Peter. Kevin will try to work on his chapter.
Global Warming – The iconic images of Hurricane Katrina and satellite images of the Artic
both hinted toward climate chaos and prodded us to ask a local expert to speak about global
warming.
Following is a synopsis of the lecture by Craig Clark written by George Smolka:
Global Warming
A Lecture by Craig Clark of the Dept. of Geography and Meteorology of Valparaiso
University on 17-Oct.’05
Subtitle- Known knowns, known unknowns, unknown unknowns
The basic mechanism of atmospheric warming is: incident radiation from the sun strikes the surface of the
earth, is absorbed, and then reradiates in the infrared region back into space. These wavelengths are
absorbed by the various gasses in the atmosphere cause warming and some of the radiation is caught by
water vapor in the atmosphere, CO2, and other greenhouse gasses which then reflect a portion of that
energy back to earth as heat. The most important greenhouse gas is water vapor. In earth’s geological
history, there have been many periods of varying temperature means. Periods where there are significant
accumulation of ice and snow, eventually leading over thousands of years to massive ice sheets called
glaciers are called “icehouse” periods. Periods where there are very little or no ice are called “greenhouse
periods. Throughout any of these epochs, there was always a great deal of annual seasonal variability
generally known as “ red noise”. Decadal variability as well as centennial variability added to the above
lead to messy data with wide standard deviations. This background variability makes it difficult to see and
obscures trends. Short periods, for instance 25 years, are so noisy as to make them unreliable predictors.
Longer periods, say hundreds of years are more normalized and therefore more reliable. The data on
trends is buried in the noise. We must assume linearity or some regular trend in order to be able to detect
change. Local point data is useless, regional data is better and global data is best for detecting change.
This means, however that local effects are very hard to predict. [In effect local temperatures could be
dropping for a time while the global trend is up] Chaos theory governs some of the trends and we must
gain comfort with this theory if we are to understand global warming.
Changes from one period to the next are caused by external forcings. These are changes in the total
energy balance on earth caused by several factors acting in unison or divergently, to cause a rise or fall in
mean earth temperature. Things that cause shifts are 1. Changes in precession [the rotation of the tilt axis
of the earth] and other orbital changes of the earth relative to the sun such as the Malenkovich Orbital
cycles lead to significant changes in mean incident radiation. The three orbital components, obliquity,
precession, and eccentricity do not seem to dominate the data. Some of the trends previously noted by
investigators appear on reexamination to be artifacts of data alliasing 2. Changes in the output of the sun
such as the Maunder sunspot cycles, which are periods of significantly lower energy output. 3.
Accumulation or depletion of greenhouse gasses. [The speaker emphasized the last 25 years as important
in the accumulation of CO2 due to mans activities, anthropogenic effects, but I can reference
measurements which date from the 1860’s that noted increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide in Europe.
Since there were few natural events to account for this rise, mans activities are implicated] such as
industry and agriculture.
Computer modeling is used extensively to both test the correctness of the assumptions and to attempt to
predict the future. This is buttressed by proxy data such as tree rings [all other things being equal, tree
growth is a function of temperature], ice cores [used to extract trapped CO2], lake sediments [pollen
trapped in the sediments indicates which plants were commonplace over several thousand years at a
lakeside, these can be separated into cryophilic (cold climate), mesophilic (temperate), or thermophilic
(tropical) plants. Also, the amount of organic material, animal shells, and plant parts in annual sediments
indicate the mean annual temperature since proliferation requires liquid water, meaning a minimum
temperature of about 4o C] and other proxy data. Expected changes depend on the model used but all are
predicting an upward trend.
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The historical record [of current interest] covers about 18,000 years with the climatic optimum occurring
about 6000 years ago, with the little ice age anomaly occurring from about 1400 to 1850 AD. This seems
to have been a local European effect, mostly. Global warming over the last 100 years appears to be an
increase of 0.6o C. This may seem to you to be a small change but is in reality a very significant change.
Predictions of precipitation currently indicate significant regional changes but an overall small increase
globally. Storm tracts are being pushed poleward [that is the severity of T-storms depend on the height of
the thunderhead column. As the planet warms, high latitude (regions closer to the poles both north and
south) areas which showed mild storms in the past due to the low ceiling, will begin to show more violent
storms due to the increased column height of T-storms]. Regional changes are much harder to predict and
more uncertain. Earlier models tended to predict more drying whereas current models are not as negative.
If you get convection currents, you will get T- storms in the summer. An overall increase in water vapor
is predicted. This will lead to a significant feedback effect and more evaporation leading to yet more
water vapor.
The loss of albedo due to the melting of ice fields and the earlier melting of winter snowfields will lead to
increased overall temperatures. One expected negative effect in the north Atlantic will be a decrease in
the thermohaline circulation due to increased sea levels. The thermohaline circulation includes the North
Atlantic Gulf Stream and deep currents. Warm, near equatorial, water from the Gulf of Mexico and the
Caribbean travels north along the east coast of North America, then heads east in the mid Atlantic and
then north, west of the British Isles and finally sinking to depths in the Arctic Ocean. As it travels
northward, it is subject to constant evaporation, becoming saltier and denser as it moves north. In Arctic
regions, sea ice forms, making the liquid portion so salty and dense that it sinks to the bottom of the
ocean. Then it travels west and eventually south along the northeastern coast of North America at depths
to replenish the water traveling northeast. As ice masses melt and raise sea levels, this current will be
interrupted and can cease altogether. This has happened in the geological past and will happen again. The
expected drop is 10-20%. This causes a serious drop in the mean temperature of Europe [and may be
responsible for the start of another ice age –recent data has shown a 30% drop in the THC circulation
since 1950].
Despite our attitude in the Midwest, the loss of all of the Great Lakes would only have a big local effect, a
small regional effect but probably no global effect. By comparison, worldwide deforestation does have a
global effect due to the large areas involved.
A very difficult component in North American weather is the complex called the North Atlantic
Oscillation (NAO). It is highly variable changing not decadly or even monthly but weekly. Valparaiso
along with most of North American east of the Rockies is part of a north south dipole in this system, as is
Greenland. When the region around Greenland is dropping in Temperature the rest including much of the
Arctic and Alaska is warming but the variability is so high that attempts to use it for prediction do not
work well. Attempts have been made using proxy data such as tree rings to tie it to other events such as
the little ice age but there is no correlation. There have been effects on ENSO (El nino Southern
Oscillation) by NAO and the effects in the north Pacific are tied to ENSO
Overall, in the last 25 years there has been a general warming with the greatest effect on temperatures in
the winter of the Midwest. In Alaska, the greatest effect is seen on springtime temperatures.
The NCAR data is tied to the location of the 500-millibar height and my data has not been changed since
2001.
Individual stations show much noise, compositing the data helps, but there is decadal and natural
variability which force one to make very conservative statements otherwise cynics will use this variability
to try to discredit the findings. For instance a period in the ‘70’s 76-79 as a trifecta were the coldest
winters in this century all embedded in a general warming trend.
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The effect on snowfall in our region shows the most consistent data. The last 15 years have had many low
snow years and no high snow years. Looking at the last 100 years of data it is still very messy data.
Either the warming rates have to be incredible or we have to wait 2-5 hundred years to have enough data
to show the trends clearly. We don’t have that kind of time.
Hurricanes dependant on Sea Surface Temperature, which has a large near term memory, for
autocorrelation, and huge multidecadal variability; much larger than middle of land masses. Global
warming effects may be there but buried in natural variation. No clear trend. Total numbers of major
tropical storm events per year have not changed. Pacific conditions are not tied to and are out of sync with
Atlantic events.
Volcanic events have short-term effects, dramatic but very short term.
LaPort anomaly proved unreal focused on precipitation but reevaluation of the data showed many flaws.
Theory dropped.
Summary:
1. Known Knowns = Climate changes on long time scales, warming continues due to greenhouse
forcing for the foreseeable future.
2. Known Unknowns = How much the climate will warm, how much feedbacks will alter the
pattern, how specific regions will be affected, how much is actually due to anthropogenic effects.
3. Unknown unknowns =? Climate surprises not predictable.
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Calendar of Events
January 27 – 10 AM Save the Dunes Native Seed Seminar, Barker House, Michigan City
March 20 – 6:30 PM Valparaiso Chain of Lakes Watershed Group meets at Porter County
Administration Building
March 31 & April 1st – Indiana Lakes Management Society Conference at Pokagon State Park,
Angola, Indiana
April 22 - Earth Day Indiana, Indianapolis
May 13, 2006 – Living With Lakes Seminars/Porter County Earth Day
Water Resources and Aquatic Habitats
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Help Wanted: Looking for someone with computer skills to create newsletter mailing labels
from our masterlist or someone with the desire to hand-address envelopes!
Your tax-deductible contributions will help to support the work of VCW
Checks to Valparaiso Chain of Lakes Watershed Group, Inc. may be mailed to 255 Park Avenue,
Valparaiso, IN 46383
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