Long-term ice phenology records spanning up to 578 years for 78 lakes around the Northern Hemisphere

Scientific Data

Sapna Sharma, Alessandro Filazzola, Thi Nguyen, M. Arshad Imrit, Kevin Blagrave, Damien Bouffard, Julia Daly, Harley Feldman, Natalie Felsine, Harrie-Jan Hendricks-Franssen, Nikolay Granin, Richard Hecock, Jan Henning L’Abée-Lund, Ed Hopkins, Neil Howk, Michael Iacono, Lesley B. Knoll, Johanna Korhonen, Hilmar J. Malmquist, Włodzimierz Marszelewski, Shin-Ichiro S. Matsuzaki, Yuichi Miyabara, Kiyoshi Miyasaka, Alexander Mills, Lolita Olson, Theodore W. Peters, David C. Richardson, Dale M. Robertson, Lars Rudstam, Danielle Wain, Holly Waterfield, Gesa A. Weyhenmeyer, Brendan Wiltse, Huaxia Yao, Andry Zhdanov & John J. Magnuson

In recent decades, lakes have experienced unprecedented ice loss with widespread ramifications for winter ecological processes. The rapid loss of ice, resurgence of winter biology, and proliferation of remote sensing technologies, presents a unique opportunity to integrate disciplines to further understand the broad spatial and temporal patterns in ice loss and its consequences. Here, we summarize ice phenology records for 78 lakes in 12 countries across North America, Europe, and Asia to permit the inclusion and harmonization of in situ ice phenology observations in future interdisciplinary studies. These ice records represent some of the longest climate observations directly collected by people. We highlight the importance of applying the same definition of ice-on and ice-off within a lake across the time-series, regardless of how the ice is observed, to broaden our understanding of ice loss across vast spatial and temporal scales.