Held annually since 2005, the session has established itself at the EGU as the primary platform for advancing limnology within the geophysical community. As confined water bodies, lakes and inland seas are particularly vulnerable to climatic and human impacts accumulated over broad catchment areas. Hence, they mirror both the global change effects and anthropogenic pressures stronger than any other aquatic objects. Research of lakes and inland seas admits many common approaches and techniques. Oceanographic methodology and instrumentation are often applicable to limnological studies. Reciprocally, insights obtained from lakes can also be instructive with respect to marine systems. Lakes and inland seas also play an important role in ecosystem services such as fisheries, aquaculture, tourism. These multifunctional roles require careful governance measures to avoid hydrological and environmental deterioration. The session brings together specialists in limnology, hydrology, boundary-layer meteorology, and oceanography of inland seas to discuss the role of lakes in the land-atmosphere interaction, the response of lakes and inland seas to global change, the physical and biogeochemical interactions within the enclosed aquatic systems. The session offers an interdisciplinary forum for discussing novel advances in observational, modeling and remote sensing studies on lakes.