The Great Lakes are getting windier. Rising water temperatures are causing winds to increase more than 10% since 1985. Mike Simonson reports from Superior.

This isn't going to make the Great Lakes into hurricane alley. At least not yet. UW-Madison Oceanic Sciences Professor Ankur Desai says data from lake buoys recorded since 1985 shows a warming Great Lakes which in turn stirs up the air above the water making it windier. He says this could impact sailboats and lake effect snowfalls.

"As it gets windier you may want to start worrying about things like recreation and airborne pollution and how it's transported in lake-rich regions."

Lake Michigan in particular gets air pollution from the Chicago region...funneled over the lake as far north as Door County. Fellow UW-Madison Researcher Galen McKinley says these changes come from around the globe.

"What's really exciting about this work right now is people talk about climate warming, we talk about climate change but local impacts have not always been easy to get out of data because it's noisy because there is a lot of natural variability but we're now able to use the data that we have. It's a long enough time frame."

Both say it's too early to know the exact impact of a windier Great Lakes, but it could also mean a slight increase on lake shore wind and less winter ice, thus more evaporation and lower lake levels.

The study was done along with the Large Lakes Laboratory at the University of Minnesota-Duluth.

The findings are printed in this week's journal Nature Geoscience.

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