Lakes are losing winter ice cover at an astonishing rate

Like melting sea ice and glaciers, the frozen sheets that cover lakes are vanishing, too. Lake ice loss has accelerated over the past 25 years, with lakes in the northern hemisphere melting an average of 45 days earlier than they did a century ago.

“The loss of ice in freshwater systems has consequences that are social, environmental and economic,” says Stephanie Hampton of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington DC.

Scientists have only recently started to…