A global dataset for lake physical variables from satellite measurements

Lakes are responding rapidly to climate change and in coming decades global warming is project to have more persistent and stronger effects on hydrology, nutrient cycling, and biodiversity. Factors driving lake condition vary widely across space and time, and lakes, in turn, play an important role in local and global climate regulation, with positive and negative feedback depending on the catchment. Understanding the complex behaviour of lakes in a changing environment is essential to effective water resource management and mitigation of climate change effects.

To support the comprehension of this topic at a global scale, satellite technologies provide a unique source of data. Remote sensing can indeed enable long-term monitoring of freshwaters, supporting water managers' decisions providing data, and filling knowledge gaps to a better understanding of the regional and local areas most affected and threatened by health status degradation. With this aim, space agencies and the remote sensing community have joined the efforts to provide global, stable, consistent, and long-term products openly available and easily accessible to different kinds of users.

In this contribution, we present the latest release of the dataset from the Lakes_cci project (funded by the European Space Agency), which provides the most complete collection of the Essential Climate Variable LAKES consisting of six thematic products (lake water extent and level, lake ice cover and thickness, lake surface water temperature, lake water-leaving reflectance). The dataset spans the time range 1992 to 2022 and includes over 2000 relatively large lakes, which represent a small fraction of the number of lakes worldwide but a significant portion of the global freshwater surface. An overview of the current version (V2.1) of the dataset and the improvements in quality and usability of the next version (V3) of the dataset will be presented, together with a set of tools and a dashboard for visualisation and download of the data.

With this contribution, we aim to discuss how this kind of product can be useful to the several research communities involved, their limits, potential improvements and chances to further joint research also respect to the research community's expectations and needs.