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Climatic Change (2014) 124:301315
DOI 10.1007/s10584-014-1087-2
Martin Schmid & Stefan Hunziker & Alfred West
Received: 27 June 2013 /Accepted: 7 February 2014 /Published online: 5 March 2014 # Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014
Abstract We estimate the effects of climatic changes, as predicted by six climate models, on lake surface temperatures on a global scale, using the lake surface equilibrium temperature as a proxy. We evaluate interactions between different forcing variables, the sensitivity of lake surface temperatures to these variables, as well as differences between climate zones. Lake surface equilibrium temperatures are predicted to increase by 70 to 85 % of the increase in air temperatures. On average, air temperature is the main driver for changes in lake surface temperatures, and its effect is reduced by ~10 % by changes in other meteorological variables. However, the contribution of these other variables to the variance is ~40 % of that of air temperature, and their effects can be important at specific locations. The warming increases the importance of longwave radiation and evaporation for the lake surface heat balance compared to shortwave radiation and convective heat fluxes. We discuss the consequences of our findings for the design and evaluation of different types of studies on climate change effects on lakes.
1 Introduction
The most direct effect of climate change on lakes is a warming of the lake surface temperature (Tsurf). Warming trends of Tsurf mostly between 0.01 and 0.1 C yr1 have been observed in the last decades both in-situ (Shimoda et al. 2011), and from satellites, with a spatial distribution
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M. Schmid (*) : S. Hunziker : A. West
Surface WatersResearch and Management, Eawag, Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology, Eawag, Seestrasse 79, CH-6047 Kastanienbaum, Switzerlande-mail: [email protected]
S. Hunziker
Department of Geography, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
S. Hunziker
Institute of Geography and Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland
A. West
Physics of Aquatic Systems Laboratory, Margaretha Kamprad Chair, EPFL, ENAC-IIE-APHYS, Lausanne, Switzerland
Lake surface temperatures in a changing climate: a global sensitivity analysis
302 Climatic Change (2014) 124:301315
similar to air temperature (Tair) trends (Schneider...