Abstract
In this first worldwide synthesis of in situ and satellite-derived lake data, we find that lake summer surface water temperatures rose rapidly (global mean = 0.34°C decade-1) between 1985 and 2009. Our analyses show that surface water warming rates are dependent on combinations of climate and local characteristics, rather than just lake location, leading to the counterintuitive result that regional consistency in lake warming is the exception, rather than the rule. The most rapidly warming lakes are widely geographically distributed, and their warming is associated with interactions among different climatic factors - from seasonally ice-covered lakes in areas where temperature and solar radiation are increasing while cloud cover is diminishing (0.72°C decade-1) to ice-free lakes experiencing increases in air temperature and solar radiation (0.53°C decade-1). The pervasive and rapid warming observed here signals the urgent need to incorporate climate impacts into vulnerability assessments and adaptation efforts for lakes.
Type
Journal Article
Type of thesis
Series
Citation
O’Reilly, C. M., Sharma, S., Gray, D. K., Hampton, S. E., Read, J. S., Rowley, R. J., … Kraemer, B. M. (2015). Rapid and highly variable warming of lake surface waters around the globe. Geophysical Research Letters, 42(24), 10773–10781. http://doi.org/10.1002/2015GL066235
Date
2015
Publisher
American Geophysical Union
Degree
Supervisors
Rights
©2015. The Authors. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.