World's lakes getting hotter, more than the air

[The Straight Story]

World's lakes getting hotter, more than the air

WASHINGTON – A first-of-its-kind NASA study is finding nice cool lakes are heating up — even faster than air.

Two NASA scientists used satellite data to look at 104 large inland lakes around the world and found that on average they have warmed 2 degrees (1.1 degree Celsius) since 1985. That's about two-and-a-half times the increase in global temperatures in the same time period.

Russia's Lake Ladoga and America's Lake Tahoe are warming significantly and the most, said study co-author Simon Hook, a scientist at the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, Calif. Tahoe has heated up by 3 degrees (1.7 degrees Celsius) since 1985, while Ladoga has been even hotter, going up by 4 degrees (2.2 degrees Celsius).

The study was published Wednesday in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

Hook and his colleague used several satellites and looked at thermal infrared images of the lakes in winter and summer. They also confirmed the numbers by comparing them to buoy data.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101123/ap_on_sc/us_sci_warming_lakes