Subscribe RSSThe east African fix lake has experienced unprecedented warming during the last century, and its surface waters are the warmest on record. The warmer waters are linked to a fall off in the lake's productivity, likely affecting fish stocks upon which millions of people in the region depend, the study found.
Doctor lakes are created when two pieces of continental crust expand apart and eventually become ocean basins over millions of years. Lake Tanganyika is 13-million years old and just about a mile deep (1.5 kilometers). The world's deepest lake is Lake Baikal in Siberia at 1,642 meters (5,387 feet).
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Researchers took pith samples from the lakebed that laid out a 1,500-year history of the lake's surface temperature, the first record of temperature variability for the lake over this antiquated span. The rift is part of a giant crack in Africa that will eventually create a new ocean .
A high average temperature of 78.8 degrees Fahrenheit (26 degrees Celsius), well-thought-out in 2003, is the warmest the lake has been in that millennium and a half. Lake Tanganyika also experienced its biggest temperature change in the 20th century, which has simulated its unique ecosystem that relies upon the natural conveyance of nutrients from the depths to jumpstart the food chain upon which the fish live on.
