Amusing Dunia: The Ice of Lake Baikal

Lake Baikal inward southern Siberia , remains covered amongst H2O ice for almost 5 months a year. Every wintertime equally the temperature plummets below nil , the surface of the world’s largest freshwater lake freezes. But H2O ice doesn’t start out to class until the kernel of wintertime , long later on the showtime of severe Siberian frosts. When other rivers together with lakes froze long earlier inward the twelvemonth , Baikal however resists H2O ice formation. Its mutual frigidity waves pause against the shore together with decorate the seaboard rocks amongst icy patterns. But when it starts freezing , typically inward the showtime of Jan , it stays frozen for the side past times side 5 months. The H2O ice on average is most a meter thick allowing cars together with trucks to hold upward easily driven over. The thickest sections tin hold upward up to 2 meters thick.

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Photo credit: Alexey Trofimov

The H2O ice heats upward during the solar daytime together with cools at night. The huge swing inward temperature causes the H2O ice to crack. These cracks are unremarkably non to a greater extent than than 0.5 to 1 meter broad , merely sometimes they tin hold upward up to iv meters broad together with stretch for hundreds of meters.

Another peculiarity of Lake Baikal’s H2O ice are the “hummocks” — heaps of H2O ice splinters that are pushed out onto the surface. Hummocks are formed during freezing when non stiff plenty H2O ice is smashed past times air current together with is thrown out on the shore. They unremarkably class along trough cracks or along-shore together with tin hold upward 10-12 meters high. The hummocks glow inward the sunlight similar huge pieces of emerald.

Lake Baikal is really interesting. It is the world’s deepest together with largest freshwater lake past times book , containing roughly 20% of the world's unfrozen surface fresh water. It is considered amidst the world's clearest lakes together with the world's oldest lake at 25 1000000 years. It is too the seventh-largest lake inward the globe past times surface area. The crescent shaped lake is located inward an ancient rift valley , together with is abode to thousands of species of plants together with animals , many of which be nowhere else inward the world.

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