Changes in the Frequency of Cool Season Lake Effects within the North American Great Lakes Region

Abstract

The North American Great Lakes influence surface weather downwind, distinctly in winter when southward migrating cold air passes over relatively warm lakes. Study of the synoptic atmospheric patterns favorable for lake effects has focused on lake-effect snowfall, the most impactful effect of the lakes. Although the patterns are conducive to lake effects, they might not actually yield discernible modification of downwind surface weather. This study uses historical daily data (1964–1965 through 2017–2018) of weather types to detect cool season (November–April) modification of cold, dry air upwind of the Great Lakes to cool, moist air downwind of the eastern (Erie, Ontario) and western (Michigan, Superior) lakes. A spatial arrangement of weather types across the region is shown to identify individual days characterized by a lake effect. The frequency of lake effects increased through the first one third of the record, but it has since decreased, most profoundly since a change point in the late 1990s and more prominently for the eastern lakes. At stations immediately downwind of the lakes, the result is a changed cool season hydroclimate, with fifty-four-year declines in lake-effect precipitation amount and frequency and in the percentages of seasonal precipitation amount and frequency attributed to lake effects.