The Impact of Climate Change on Lakes in Britain and Ireland

The CLIME studies in Western Europe were confined to a relatively small number of lakes situated in Britain and Ireland. In this chapter, we use the terms ‘Britain’ and ‘Ireland’ when describing the location of the lakes and the term ‘British Isles’ to define the area covered by the weather typing system devised by Lamb (1950). The climate of Britain and Ireland is notoriously variable and is strongly influenced by the movement of weather systems across the Atlantic (Barrow and Hulme, 1997). Winters are typically mild and wet but there are large year-to-year variations in the seasonal distribution of the rainfall. The variable nature of the climate has a pronounced effect on the physical characteristics of the lakes and the flux of nutrients (Allott, 1986; George et al., 2004). In this chapter, we review the climatic changes projected for the region and assess their potential impact on the dynamics of the lakes.