Dataset for: Climate causes abrupt shifts in productivity in thousands of lakes with low human impact

These datasets include both the raw data and the model results from a project exploring causal relationships between climate and lake productivity of a diverse set of 24,452 US lakes over 34 years (1984-2008). Climate change is expected to increase lake productivity and algal blooms and cause regime shifts, particularly in human-impacted ecosystems. First we assessed the potential for nonlinear dynamics in summer median lake chlorophyll (CHL; derived from remote sensing) to demonstrate the potential for regime shifts in these lakes; second, we modeled the causal effects of climate on lake CHL over the 34 years. Climate was causally related to CHL in 34% of lakes; of those, 71% exhibited abrupt shifts, but only 13% had the potential for regime shifts. Climate-influenced lakes had low productivity at environmental extremes and experienced some directional climate change. Our synthesis of 24,452 time series demonstrates that effects of climate on lake productivity depend on recent climate change interacting with human impact and environmental context.