Hydrologists of the St. Petersburg Scientific Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences reported noticeable warming and changes in the ice cover on Lake Ladoga over the past 40 years. The warm period in this region has become longer, and the ice begins to melt earlier than usual.
According to Mikhail Naumenko, the head of the laboratory of the Institute of Lake Discovery, these changes are associated with climatic fluctuations in northwest Russia and affect the ecosystem of the lake. The data obtained will help create forecasts of further changes.
Since 2013, the average annual temperature in the north of Lake Ladoga increased by 2 ° C – from the beginning of the 20th century it reached 4.5 ° C, and in 2020 – 6.5 ° C. Over the past 30 years, warm and very warm winters began to happen more often, as well as the warm season lengthened.
This has influenced the ice regime: over the past ten years, sections of open water began to appear in the deep parts of the lake – for the first time during satellite observations. The smallest ice cover was recorded in the winter of 2020, when the ice covered only about 20% of the area of the lake.
