Is lake ice disappearing from the Earth system?

Is lake ice disappearing from the Earth system?

 

Luke Grant², Zeli Tan⁷, Marjorie Perroud⁸, Victor Stepanenko⁹, Bram Droppers³, Annette B.G. Janssen³, R. Iestyn Woolway⁴, Martin Schmid¹¹, Jacob Schewe⁶, Fang Zhao⁶, Gosia Golub⁵, Rafael Macré¹⁰, Don Pierson⁵, Wim Thiery^1,2, Inne Vanderkelen², Sonia Seneviratne¹

 

¹ ETH Zurich, Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland.

² Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Department of Hydrology and Hydraulic Engineering, Brussels, Belgium.

³ Wageningen University & Research, Water systems and Global Change, Wageningen, the Netherlands.

­­⁴ Dundalk Institute of Technology, Dundalk, Ireland

⁵ Uppsala University, Dept of Ecology and Genetics / Limnology, Uppsala, Sweden.

⁶ Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, 14473 Potsdam, Germany

⁷ Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, WA, USA

⁸ University of Geneva, Institute for Environmental Sciences, Carouge, Switzerland

⁹ Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia

¹⁰ Catalan Institute for Water Research, Girona, Spain

¹¹ Eawag: Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology, Surface Waters - Research and Management - Kastanienbaum, Switzerland

 

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Proposed session: HS10.9 - Lakes and Inland Seas in a Changing Environment

Corresponding author’s e-mail address: luke.grant@vub.be

 

 

Lakes offer manifold ecosystem services and their ice cover stabilizes lake physics, biogeochemistry and ecological processes. The impacts of climate change on lake ice and lake temperatures are well documented for individual lakes and regions through site specific studies. Yet, future global projections of these variables are mostly limited to empirical approaches and singular, coarse-resolution lake model simulations forced by individual climate model outputs. Through the Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project (ISIMIP) we offer an improved global analysis of the lake temperature (2m depth), lake ice cover duration and lake ice thickness projections of six uncalibrated, global-scale lake models to assess the fate of future lake ice and lake temperatures. Lake model simulations were performed on a generic lake within each lake-containing land cell of a global 0.5^o grid. Simulations were at daily resolution and forced by four bias-corrected global climate models from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project version 5 (CMIP5) for pre-industrial to future periods (1661-2099) and representative concentration pathways 2.6, 6.0 and 8.5. In all scenarios, a nearly unanimous increase in lake temperatures and disappearance of lake ice is projected. The largest reductions in ice thickness and duration will occur in northern latitudes and coastal regions, respectively. Simulations show a greater shift in the timing of ice break-up rather than the onset of ice cover. These geographical and seasonal trends require further statistical analysis to clarify their significance. In general, discrepancies in the projected magnitudes of change for lake ice and temperature under different RCPs underline the benefit of mitigating climate change as preventative to large changes in the biogeochemistry and ecology of lakes.