Visualizing relationships between hydrology, climate, and water level fluctuations on Earth's largest system of lakes

Abstract

Understanding drivers behind monthly, annual, and decadal water level fluctuations on the North American Great Lakes is a high priority for regional research and water resource management planning. The need for improved understanding of these relationships is underscored by a series of recent unprecedented extreme water level patterns, including (but not limited to) record low water levels on Lakes Michigan and Huron in December 2012 and January 2013. To address this need, we developed the Great Lakes Hydro-Climate Dashboard (GLHCD), a dynamic flash-based web interface that builds upon the previously-released Great Lakes Water Level Dashboard (GLWLD). In addition to including water level data and projections from the GLWLD, the GLHCD presents a range of hydrological and climatological data through an improved graphical user interface specifically designed to manage, and display simultaneously, a variety of data time series from different sources. By serving as a common portal to critical regional hydro-climate and water level data, the GLHCD helps visualize and explain lake level phenomena including water level declines across all of the Great Lakes in the early 1960s and their relationship to changes in regional precipitation, as well as the abrupt water level declines in the late 1990s and their relationship to remarkable changes in over-lake evaporation. By providing insight into these, and other important regional hydro-climate events, the GLHCD helps practitioners, researchers, and the general public improve their understanding of the drivers behind Great Lakes water levels, and to employ that understanding in prudent water resource management planning.