With diminishing water levels in the Great Lakes, why can’t partial barriers be installed at Port Huron, the Niagara River and St. Lawrence River in order to reduce the outflow? I am aware of the dams above Niagara Falls which reduce the water flow over the Falls at night.
This would eventually raise the water levels so that this valuable resource could be utilized in the future. The benifits would be to navigation, power generation and possibly to agriculture in the central U.S…
I wonder if Chicago is cleaned up enough that you can stop the reversal of the Chicago river. You’d still have to get their drinking water from somewhere else, but that would probably be easier than a new barrier at Niagara.
There is already a control system to regulate outflow from Lake Ontario into the St. Lawrence River. Ditto Huron and Erie I believe.
While there is a lot of water in the Great Lakes, the flow available isn’t all that large compared to the demand. Especially if you want to keep the shipping lanes open. So there is only a limited amount of “play” in the system which is unable to cope with longer term dry spells.
They are already pushing the limits of what they can do to increase levels in wet periods to get thru dry periods.
The trick is to eliminate out-of basin removals and get much more efficient on irrigation.
Are water levels going down in all the lakes, or just Michigan/Huron?
Is this a trend we expect to see continue, based on climate models? (I’m skeptical – not of what we inaccurately call “global warming”, but of any very specific local forecasts.)
I remember when the levels were nearly this low in 1964. Lots of folks built in front of the treeline. I remember that 9 years later the water level rose by nearly 5 feet. A few years after that (when erosion had time to kick in; erosion being pretty quick when the medium is sand) those houses were lost. At the time, there was a lot of hubbub that the level increase was intentional to improve shipping, but I believe it was just conspiracy theory.
The control of outflow of Ontario doesn’t affect Superior, Michigan, and Huron. There is some control on the outflow of Superior into Michigan-Huron (which are pratically speaking, one lake). That control is pretty small, though, and only has significant effect over a number of years of policy, and can’t counteract any large natural trends.
My family has property on Lake Huron, and I misspent much of my youth in, on, or by the lake. In addition, there’s the wreck of a steamship from 1880 just offshore, which makes an excellent reference for water levels, so we pay a lot of attention. According to NOAA data, '64 was the lowest level on record. Levels this summer were lower than that, but it’s not clear that this is a trend that will continue as far as I know.
Here’s the historical data:
http://www.glerl.noaa.gov/data/now/wlevels/dbd/
Clearly there’s no issue in the lower lakes (Erie and Ontario). Superior is on the low side, so lowering it to fill Michigan/-Huron might not be the best idea.
PLEASE don’t reverse the Chigago river! We like our nice clean Great Lakes water! Also, I doubt the impact would be significant, but don’t have any data to back that up.
Bottom line: while it’s interesting to consider options, I don’t think there’s a need to intervene yet.
the Chicago River won’t be reversed because of those invasive carp.
In the widget I linked to above, turn off all but Michigan-Huron, and turn on “month’s record low” (checkboxes on the right). You’ll see that levels aren’t even as low as in 64 yet, when there looked like we had a strong downward trend.
Since 2000 levels have been pretty steady on the low end, with this year one of the lowest, but no clear trend.
Does the OP have a link pointing out any real problem here? Or forecasts?
Currently, you can not get water from Lake Michigan unless you’re in the Lake Michigan watershed. This causes some consternation in towns in Indiana and Illinois (and presumably Wisconsin and Michigan) who are just beyond the watershed border.
The other thing to consider is that the farms surrounding the Great Lakes are far less dependent on irrigation than those further west, so much less irrigating is done. We do have sufficient rainfall (most years) to grow crops without irrigation.
Bottom line: there currently aren’t out-of-basin removals. The levels in the lakes are dropping for reasons other than human water diversion to other areas.
In '64, no one had heard of global warming. Indeed, a decade later, some scientists were saying we were headed for global cooling.
Today’s low lake levels are often blamed on global warming, but that wasn’t the reason in '64, why is it now?
Our state seems to have solved that by defining the required building setback referenced to the “Ordinary High Water Mark,” not the current water level. Supposedly the OHWM is determined by a Planning & Zoning Dept. geologist, if they have one, but it can be subject to considerable guesswork on shores with sand dunes. An elevation map might not give you the correct answer, either, which is why I keep pictures just in case I am ever challenged by P&Z.
Right, and a topological map is necessary for Wisconsin to see that the drainage area to Lake Michigan excludes most of the state. You can draw a line from Green Bay south to Milwaukee for a rough “drainage divide,” but the line passes thru Milwaukee suburbs. So some towns only ~10 miles from the lake cannot use it for input or output.
It cracks me up that a bit of Milwaukee County’s southwesternmost segment drains into the Mississippi watershed.
http://dnr.wi.gov/topic/WaterUse/images/Waukesha_straddle_map.jpg
Take a look at the map of the Lake Michigan basin. Once you go south of Milwaukee, the actual watershed virtually hugs the shoreline. Roughly speaking, only the area approximately east of Cicero Ave. in Chicago and north of the toll road in Indiana are in the Lake Michigan watershed.
I need to jump up and down on this with hobnailed boots.
Basically, the only serious proponent of global cooling at that time was Stephen Schneider. He was a great publicist and managed to garner huge amounts of media attention.
He did not get the scientific community to agree with him. Despite the popular science attention, his fellow researchers battled him every step of the way. Before he died in 2010 he had himself come around and was warning that we needed to do something *now *to avert the rise of oceans.
It is flat out wrong to ever say that scientists predicted an ice age or a major cooling of any kind. One guy did. A major guy, to be sure. But there are major guys who speak against the speed of light being a constant. There are always major guys who argue against anything. But science is a consensus game and there was never a consensus around global cooling. Never.
the watershed divide gets real low as it goes south. in the Milwaukee area there is a uphill from the lake. in Oak Park, IL it is the block on the other side of the street is a few inches higher than me.
Correct. As I said, there is not some huge diversion out of the Lakes’ basins. This was done deliberately to prevent anyone doing massive diversion projects out of fear it would be detrimental to the Lakes region.
Are your hobnailed boots going to kick the first part of my statement, or only the second?
I was just about to say the exact same thing until I saw your post (RealClimate’s take on the "global cooling in the 1970s claim, which, ironically, was also attributed to human activity, namely sulfate pollution, which did cause global temperatures to stop rising for a decade or two, or rather, Northern Hemisphere temperatures, since we now know that the Southern Hemisphere continued warming during that period).
As far as attributing water levels in the Great Lakes to global climate change, one has to take into account local climate patterns that operate on shorter timescales, many of which are also not predictable; for example, nobody suspected that Arctic sea ice loss could lead to extreme winter weather until it started happening around 2007, coincident with the emergence of a new climate pattern (anomalous warmth in the Arctic weakens the jet stream, which in turn allows (relatively) cold air to spill south; as can be seen on these maps, which tells me we’ll probably see a lot of news about extreme cold and snowstorms soon, and predictably, claims that global cooling is occurring).
Correct. The consumptive use that is not returned is the primary concern.
The Great Lakes Basin Compact has pretty much shut the door on new out-of-basin use that fails to return the non-consumed water, but it has grandfathered the existing out-of-basin draws, including the Chicago River which draws off a couple of billion gallons per day, so yes, out-of-basin diversion is still part of the problem. Here is a pdf that includes tables that set out interbasin diversionon as state by state basis (Ontario is negative due to a diversion into Superior of the Ogoki River that previously was on the Arctic Ocean watershed).
It was a relief that the US Feds permitted the Compact, for initially it was just the Great Lakes states (and equivalent legislation on the Canadian side) without US federal approval, but I’m still concerned about political pressure for out-of-basin diversion once the plains go dry. Fortunately, due to the far greater population in the Great Lakes states when compared to the dry-land states, I expect that the lakes will be preserved from this fate.
Could water levels in the Great Lakes be raised?
Well, it’s off-season for boating right now and many boats are in winter storage. Just wait until next spring, when the boats are put back in the water. That’ll raise the level something fierce.
I remember the 1964 low water levels all too well, and current Lake Michigan levels are right about there now. Some blame dredging the in the St. Clair river for increasing outflow, but I’m not convinced that’s the cause. For centures, the Lakes did as the Lakes have always done, gone up and down. I’ll keep hoping for a mild increase in levels, but would rather not return to the 1986 levels when the lake tried to eat my house. And did take a neighbor’s front porch.
I must confess that perhaps I contribute to the lake-lowering problem. I take my morning fluids from the tap at home on the shore of the lake, and don’t use the bathroom until I reach work, where the water eventually flows into the Mississippi. Net loss. 