Over 128 years, lake watchers chart ‘ice out’ changes

The Staples family has been watching climate change happen just a “stone’s throw” from their front door for 128 years.

Since 1878, this Washington County family has volunteered to keep the official record of when the ice recedes from West Grand Lake, data scientists now are using to find the “footprint” of global climate change in Maine.

“It seems as if the climate here in the winter isn’t as extreme as it used to be,” Marion Staples said. “We’re seeing warmer winters … nowhere near as much snow.”

A hundred years ago, Staples’ grandmother kept careful records of the ice-out date for the fishermen who frequented her sporting camp. Today, a warden pilot helps the third generation keep track of the ice’s progress.

The date that the ice finally disappears from the lake is a matter of local gossip, hashed over at the streamside Pine Tree Store where locals make their guesses of the magic number.

Scientists also look to lakes and rivers for more precise signals of a shifting climate. In fact, ice-out dates, ice thickness measurements and the timing of the spring snowmelt indicate that Maine’s winters have undergone significant changes over the past hundred years, said Glen Hodgkins, a hydrologist with the United States Geological Survey in Augusta.

The past four or five decades, in particular, have brought shorter, milder winters to northern New England. Averaged data from all three climate indicators show spring arriving one to two weeks earlier than it did in the 1950s and ’60s, Hodgkins said.

A USGS analysis of ice-out dates at 29 New England lakes revealed that the event is occurring an average of nine days earlier in northern and mountainous regions and 16 days earlier in southern New England.

Hodgkins and his colleagues also studied the thickness of the ice on the Piscataquis River, noting that the ice thinned by about 9 inches between 1912 and 2001, helping to prompt the earlier ice-out date.

At 13 sites statewide, heavy spring stream flows from melting snow have occurred as much as two weeks earlier, according to a recent USGS study.

The evidence that Maine’s climate is shifting just keeps mounting, and every study done in New England echoes the findings of research being conducted worldwide, Hodgkins said.

“We’re looking at some pretty dramatic changes,” he said.