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Why are lakes cold in the summer?

The high heat capacity and cooling power of evaporation work on bodies of water as well as your body. Bodies of water are slow to warm up, even under a blazing summer sun, and are constantly cooled by evaporation.



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If you live in Michigan it probably won't come as a shock to you that Lake Superior is the coldest lake in the United States.

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The high concentration of salt in ocean water lowers its freezing point from 32° F (0° C) to 28° F (-2° C). As a result, the ambient temperature must reach a lower point in order to freeze the ocean than to freeze freshwater lakes.

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At 1,943 feet (592 meters), Crater Lake is the deepest lake in the United States and one of the deepest in the world. The depths were first explored thoroughly in 1886 by a party from the U.S. Geological Survey.

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It's a process known as upwelling, which plays out along the entire U.S. Pacific coast. Upwelling explains why water temperatures along California, Oregon and Washington beaches are much cooler than similar-latitude beaches in the East.

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The Earth gets hotter as one travels towards the core, known as the geothermal gradient. The geothermal gradient is the amount that the Earth's temperature increases with depth. It indicates heat ?owing from the Earth's warm interior to its surface.

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During the early morning hours, the land and the water start out at roughly the same temperature. On a calm morning, a given pressure surface will be at the same height above both the land and water. A few hours later, the sun's energy begins to warm the land more rapidly than the water.

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We now have a micro (small) scale circulation — the lake breeze. This lake breeze that develops in the spring can cause a 30 degree difference in temperature over a few miles. It can oscillate back and forth, where you a warm one minute, but cold the next. We see this on a grand scale as well around the globe.

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