Climate change is contributing to rapid changes in lake ice cover across the Northern Hemisphere, thereby impacting local communities and ecosystems. Using lake ice cover time-series spanning over 87 yr for 43 lakes across the Northern Hemisphere, we found that the interannual variability in ice duration, measured as standard deviation, significantly increased in only half of our studied lakes. We observed that the interannual variability in ice duration peaked when lakes were, on average, covered by ice for about 1 month, while both longer and shorter long-term mean ice cover duration resulted in lower interannual variability in ice duration. These results demonstrate that the ice cover duration can become so short that the interannual variability rapidly declines. The interannual variability in ice duration showed a strong dependency on global temperature anomalies and teleconnections, such as the North Atlantic Oscillation and El Niño–Southern Oscillation. We conclude that many lakes across the Northern Hemisphere will experience a decline in interannual ice cover variability and shift to open water during the winter under a continued global warming trend which will affect lake biological, cultural, and economic processes.

中文翻译：

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湖冰年际变化对气候变化的非线性响应

气候变化正在导致北半球湖泊冰盖的快速变化，从而影响当地社区和生态系统。利用北半球 43 个湖泊超过 87 年的湖冰覆盖时间序列，我们发现，以标准差衡量的冰持续时间的年际变化，在我们研究的湖泊中，只有一半显着增加。我们观察到，当湖泊平均被冰覆盖约 1 个月时，冰持续时间的年际变化达到峰值，而较长和较短的长期平均冰覆盖持续时间都会导致冰持续时间的年际变化较低。这些结果表明，冰盖持续时间可能变得如此之短，以至于年际变化迅速下降。冰持续时间的年际变化显示出对全球温度异常和遥相关的强烈依赖性，例如北大西洋涛动和厄尔尼诺-南方涛动。我们得出的结论是，在持续的全球变暖趋势下，北半球的许多湖泊将经历年际冰盖变化的下降，并在冬季转向开放水域，这将影响湖泊的生物、文化和经济过程。