Record High Great Lakes Water Level Expected to Climb Higher in 2020

[Richard]

^ the good news is my island lot and house show still on dry land in that picture,so I am good,providing I live another couple thousand years.

I guess in theory man has altered the landscape,if Paul Bunyan had not played with Babe the blue ox,Minnesota and Michigan would have no lakes.

We could blame it on him.

[Hermod]

All of "science" pertaining to global warming is limited to observations since the advent of thermometers to measure temperature and extrapolating from that data.

If you read journal and literary observations back into history:

1. Sea level rise during the Little Climatic Optimum [[the Viking era) show that the polar ice pack retreated much further north than it does today and that much of England which is dry land today was swampy fenland [[salt water marsh) during the 11th century

2. Hurricanes were so violent during the 17th and 18th century [[the Little Ice Age) that they created massive geographic shifts in Virginia and North Carolina. Examples are Lynnhaven Bay, Willoughby Spit, and closure of inlets into the NC sounds from the ocean.

[Lowell]

All of "science" pertaining to global warming is limited to observations since the advent of thermometers to measure temperature and extrapolating from that data....

While I have some issues with the preciseness of climate science predictions, your statement is not quite accurate. For instance. there are ice and tree cores, sediment layers and other methods to create climate history.

[Zacha341]

Certainly NOT to minimize those loosing property, and prop values from water rising but at Riverside Pk by the Ambassador bridge river really looking creepily high to look down into.

Weird to be so high visually.

I only went to look once. Height not as noticeable at the River Walk water front area. Goodness that this will continue!!

[mwilbert]

Sea level is consistently rising. That's quite visible and measurable, and is likely to continue into the far future. The only real question is how fast the levels rise, and that is a complicated question because we don't know exactly how the ice will melt. With respect to Obama's new purchase on Cape Cod, that property will almost certainly be under water at some point, but right now it's about 15' above sea level and unless there's some catastrophic ice sheet failure, or triumph of geriatric medicine, it will still be well above sea level when Obama dies. Of course, as time passes it will be increasingly vulnerable to storm damage.

What's happening to the level of the Great Lakes is much less clear. Climate change is increasing both precipitation and evaporation in the Great Lakes region, and the instability of the polar climate may lead to more or less ice cover in winter, also affecting evaporation. While the lakes are big, they are tiny compared to the ocean, meaning year-to-year fluctuations in the weather in the near vicinity makes a big difference, while annual weather fluctuations hardly affect the average ocean level at all. So in the near term, it's much harder to predict the lake levels than the ocean levels.

But what is unquestionable is that there's a lot of stuff built near the lakes that did not anticipate the lakes being this high for a protracted period.

[Gistok]

With high water levels... when winter wind and lake shore ice work in unison... this disaster can happen....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPy_y67R1BE

[Maof]

With high water levels... when winter wind and lake shore ice work in unison... this disaster can happen....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPy_y67R1BE

I have actually seen this happen to a friend's home on Lake St. Clair about 8 years or so ago. We could hear it a block away. Luckily for them, it didn't get this close to their home. It really is something to witness.

[Zacha341]

Michigan's version of the Blob!

[Zacha341]

Higher levels still...

https://www.freep.com/story/news/loc...ls/4442048002/

[Richard]

Higher levels still...

https://www.freep.com/story/news/loc...ls/4442048002/

As a kid I grew up on the Mississippi River in Minneapolis,weird thing was if we had a heavy snowfall the river would rise in the spring and sometimes even flood,and if it was mild winter the levels would stay the same.

I could never figure out why.

In Fl they will take a 100 year old swamp,fill it in with dirt and build $500k homes on it then it becomes climate change because it floods when it rains heavy,or fill in a dry creek bed and wonder why the water does not flow away.

We built on and over mother nature’s natural flow of things and then wonder why.

The army corps of engineers have done more damage in their quest in flood prevention that they are having to correct more things that they screwed up in the past.

[Hermod]

If you look at the 100 year old graphs of Great Lakes water levels, the rises and falls have been cyclic over time rather than a steady rise due to global warming.

[Cincinnati_Kid]

Never understood why people built their homes, so close to the edge of a big river, lake or ocean. The likelihood of erosion over time is very high.

[rickbak]

I'm just waiting on the Lions to finally win the Super Bowl. Hell will freeze over, the ice caps will stop melting, and we can skate from Michigan to Europe.

[Richard]

Never understood why people built their homes, so close to the edge of a big river, lake or ocean. The likelihood of erosion over time is very high.

Like the houses,apartments and other commercial buildings built in the 1950s on the bluffs in California overlooking the ocean.

That are now falling into the sea,30’ down.

Our waterways and coastlines are constantly in flux,when erosion happens the material removed never just disappears,it gets moved around so where we lose land in one spot it is gained in another.

When you look at places like the Mississippi delta or the mid west it is like it was all designed to control the flow of water south,the mid west farm lands were rich in sediments so it made good farm land,forget about it was designed to absorb the spring overflow,so they devolved it and it now floods every town south of it and wonder why.

Look at the Grand Canyon,it was created by a river over thousands of years,all of that soul and rock removed went somewhere and created new land.

The early settlers adapted to the land and now we try to make the land adapt to us.