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Reconstructing Great Lakes air temperature and ice dynamics data back to 1897

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Abstract

Ice cover on the Great Lakes plays an important role in regional climate, supports tourism and recreation, and provides ecological habitat. As the climate warms, ice cover in the Great Lakes is expected to decline, which in turn will create more lake effect precipitation, reduce ice cover for recreation, and alter habitat for aquatic species. While it is important to understand the historical ice patterns to better understand past distributions of aquatic species and improve the accuracy of forecasts for future ice cover on the lakes, Great Lakes ice cover data prior to 1973 is scarce, due to the limited routine satellite observations. We used weather station data around the Great Lakes to compile daily air temperature, calculate cumulative freezing degree-days and net melting degree-days from 1897–2023, and develop raster layers estimating ice duration and variability spatially during the historical period from 1897–1960.

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Data availability

The daily air temperature data and the calculated modeled CFDD and NMDD data for 1897–2023 are available as csv files for download from National Centers for Environmental Information version 2.224. The historical ice duration spatial raster layers (mean and CV for each lake at 1.8 km resolution) are available as a geodatabase38.

Code availability

All code can be found in the Github repository https://github.com/kingka21/historical_GL_ice and archived in Zenodo42.

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Acknowledgements

Our project was funded through the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative and the Coregonine Restoration Template. Any use of trade, firm, or product names is for descriptive purposes only and does not imply endorsement by the U.S. Government.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Fisheries Research, Michigan Department of Natural Resources, and University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA

    Katelyn King

  2. Cooperative Institute for Great Lakes Research, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA

    Ayumi Fujisaki-Manome

  3. Climate & Space Science and Engineering, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA

    Ayumi Fujisaki-Manome

  4. United States Geological Survey, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA

    Cory Brant

  5. LimnoTech, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA

    Danielle Cohn

  6. School for Environment and Sustainability (SEAS), University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA

    Danielle Cohn & Karen Alofs

  7. FlowWest, Los Angeles, California, USA

    Inigo Peng

Authors

  1. Katelyn King
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  2. Ayumi Fujisaki-Manome
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  3. Cory Brant
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  4. Danielle Cohn
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  5. Inigo Peng
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  6. Karen Alofs
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Contributions

K.B.S.K. created the spatial ice methods and layers, lead writing the manuscript, and made Figs. 3,4, 7, and 8. A.F.M. led, mentored, and managed students for the air temperature and freezing/melting degree days methodology and made Figs. 2, 5, and 6. D.C. and I.P. performed initial air temperature and freezing/melting degree day methods. D.C. made Fig. 1. K.M.A. and C.B. secured funding and provided mentoring for the entire project. All authors contributed to writing and reviewed and edited the entire manuscript.

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Correspondence to
Katelyn King.

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Supplementary information

Time series plots of surface air temperature (oC)

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King, K., Fujisaki-Manome, A., Brant, C. et al. Reconstructing Great Lakes air temperature and ice dynamics data back to 1897.
Sci Data (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-026-06637-1

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