TY - JOUR

T1 - Global reconstruction of twentieth century lake surface water temperature reveals different warming trends depending on the climatic zone

AU - Piccolroaz, Sebastiano

AU - Woolway, R. Iestyn

AU - Merchant, Christopher J.

PY - 2020/6/1

Y1 - 2020/6/1

N2 - Lake surface water temperatures (LSWTs) are sensitive to climate change, but previous studies have typically focused on temperatures from only the last few decades. Thus, while there is good appreciation of LSWT warming in recent decades, our understanding of longer-term temperature change is comparatively limited. In this study, we use a mechanistically based open-source model (air2water), driven by air temperature from a state-of-the-art global atmospheric reanalysis (ERA-20C) and calibrated with satellite-derived LSWT observations (ARC-Lake v3), to investigate the long-term change in LSWT worldwide. The predictive ability of the model is tested across 606 lakes, with 91% of the lakes showing a daily root mean square error smaller than 1.5 °C. Model performance was better at mid-latitudes and decreased towards the equator. The results illustrated highly variable mean annual LSWT trends during the twentieth century and across climatic regions. Substantial warming is evident after ~ 1980 and the most responsive lakes to climate change are located in the temperate regions.

AB - Lake surface water temperatures (LSWTs) are sensitive to climate change, but previous studies have typically focused on temperatures from only the last few decades. Thus, while there is good appreciation of LSWT warming in recent decades, our understanding of longer-term temperature change is comparatively limited. In this study, we use a mechanistically based open-source model (air2water), driven by air temperature from a state-of-the-art global atmospheric reanalysis (ERA-20C) and calibrated with satellite-derived LSWT observations (ARC-Lake v3), to investigate the long-term change in LSWT worldwide. The predictive ability of the model is tested across 606 lakes, with 91% of the lakes showing a daily root mean square error smaller than 1.5 °C. Model performance was better at mid-latitudes and decreased towards the equator. The results illustrated highly variable mean annual LSWT trends during the twentieth century and across climatic regions. Substantial warming is evident after ~ 1980 and the most responsive lakes to climate change are located in the temperate regions.

KW - Air2water

KW - Modelling

KW - Climate change

KW - Limnology

KW - Remote sensing

KW - Reanalysis

U2 - 10.1007/s10584-020-02663-z

DO - 10.1007/s10584-020-02663-z

M3 - Article

VL - 160

SP - 427

EP - 442

JO - Climatic Change

JF - Climatic Change

SN - 0165-0009

IS - 3

ER -