Satellite observations indicate rapid warming trend for lakes in California and Nevada

Abstract

[1] Large lake temperatures are excellent indicators of climate change; however, their usefulness is limited by the paucity of in situ measurements and lack of long-term data records. Thermal infrared satellite imagery has the potential to provide frequent and accurate retrievals of lake surface temperatures spanning several decades on a global scale. Analysis of seventeen years of data from the Along-Track Scanning Radiometer series of sensors and data from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer shows that six lakes situated in California and Nevada have exhibited average summer nighttime warming trends of 0.11 ± 0.02°C yr À1 (p < 0.002) since 1992. A comparison with air temperature observations suggests that the lake surface temperature is warming approximately twice as fast as the average minimum surface air temperature.

Inter-annual climate variability and zooplankton: applying teleconnection indices to two deep subalpine lakes in Italy

“…Studies on climate impact are commonly restricted to analyses of surface water temperatures, which are much more influenced by daily variations and of biological restricted relevance. The focus on surface water temperature was related to the possibility of applying satellites for detecting temperature change at large scale (Schneider et al, 2009). Owing to our interest in Daphnia, we considered winter water temperatures of the water layer where the species was mainly distributed, particularly in spring, i.e.…”

Transparency, Geomorphology and Mixing Regime Explain Variability in Trends in Lake Temperature and Stratification across Northeastern North America (1975–2014)

“…Several other regional studies from the United States, Canada and Italy show varying degrees of surface warming, ranging from 0.30 °C decade −1 (small Wisconsin lakes [18]) to as high as 1.10 °C decade −1 (large Nevada and California lakes [34]; Table 2). Our average, near-surface temperature trends fall near the median reported across these regional and single-lake studies.…”

Winter thermal structure of Lake Superior

“…Recent studies have investigated the thermal characteristics of large lakes using a variety of methods, including direct, in situ measurements (Verburg et al 2003;Coats et al 2006;Hampton et al 2008), remote sensing techniques (Schneider et al 2009;Schneider and Hook 2010), and other sources, such as historical records of ice cover (Magnuson et al 2000). Collecting data in large lakes requires overcoming challenges not encountered when making measurements on land or in small lakes, and few time-series or other observations go back more than a few decades, (McCormick and Fahnenstiel 1999;Verburg et al 2003;Vollmer et al 2005).…”