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Scientists discovered that climate change determined a route change for a large river.
STATES CHRONICLE – On April 17, a team of scientists developed a paper after they discovered that climate change caused a large river to change its route. Human-made climate change resulted in the reorganization of a large river. The team unveiled that in 2016 the withdrawal of a large glacier in the Yukon territory in Canada triggered the rerouting of a large river system. It cut down the flow to the largest lake in the Yukon, channeling fresh water to the Pacific Ocean south of Alaska, instead of directing it to the Bering Sea.
Human-made climate change triggered a large river to change its route
Researchers argued that this reorganization of a river is an act of “river piracy.” This type of events was very popular in the geologic past of our planet, but this never was a present-day event. Scientists also argued that this climate change-caused catastrophe could be considered a “geologically instantaneous” event. The lead author of the study, Daniel Shugar, a researcher at the University of Washington at Tacoma, claimed that the Slims River is no longer what they were used to see a few years ago. Now, the stream was just a bleached version of what it used to be.
Today, the river is hardly flowing. Shugar stated that day after day the water level is decreasing and more sand bars appear from below the river. The new study was recently released in the Nature Geoscience journal. The new study was conducted with the help of researchers coming from six US and Canadian universities. The new analysis revealed that the low level of water of the Slims River is slowly affecting the Kluane Lake.
The river caused the water levels of Kluane Lake to drop
This lake is known to be the largest one in the Yukon Territory. In August, the water level of the lake was very impoverished. Two communities which live near the lake need to calculate and diminish their intake of water, adjusting to the low water levels. Shugar noted that the level of the Kluane Lake had significantly decreased last year and it is bound to drop even more this year.
If the water level drops below the lake’s other outlet, at the north end, then it will become a closed basin. This will bring a lot of changes to the biology, chemistry and the structure of the lake.
Image courtesy of: maxpixel
