Ice-thermal Regime of Lake Baikal under Conditions of Modern Warming (1950–2017)

Abstract

The impact of modern climate change on lakes is one of the most relevant problems in the field of limnology. For Lake Baikal this impact is manifested in the change in abiotic characteristics of the lake ecosystem. It is shown that the pattern of modern climate change in the Baikal region includes both the “secular” warming trend and the intrasecular variations which exceed this trend in the scale and may be caused by atmospheric circulation. The effect of atmospheric circulation is associated with the physiographic characteristics of separate parts of the lake and its watershed. The influence of changes in atmospheric circulation on the ice and thermal regime of Lake Baikal is analyzed for the period of 1950–2017 for which objective analysis data on the large-scale atmospheric circulation in the Northern Hemisphere are available.