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  1. Home
  2. Essential Climate Variables
  3. Lakes

Lakes

Information on changes in lake level and area is required on a monthly basis for climate assessment purposes. Approximately 95% of the volume of water held globally in approximately 4 000 000 lakes is contained in the world’s 80 largest lakes.

  Domain: Terrestrial
  Subdomain: Hydrology
  Scientific Area: Hydrosphere
  ECV Steward: Jean-Francois Cretaux
  Products:  Lake Water Level; Water Extent; Lake Surface Water Temperature; Lake Ice Thickness; Lake Ice Cover; Lake Water-Leaving Reflectance

 


ECV Products and Requirements

These products and requirements reflect the Implementation Plan 2022 (GCOS-244).

The requirements are found in the complete 2022 ECVs Requirements document as well: ECV Lakes.

Products   Lake Water Level (LWL)     Lake Water Extent (LWE)     Lake Surface Water Temperature (LSWT)
  (*) Unit Values   Unit Values   Unit Values
Horizontal Resolution G m -   m 10   km 0.1
B -   30   1
T 100   1000   2
Vertical Resolution G   -     -     -
B -   -   -
T -   -   -
Temporal Resolution G d 1   d 5   h 3
B 30       24
T 365   30   240
Timeliness G d 1   d 5   d 1
B 30       30
T 365   365   365
Required Measurement Uncertainty (2-sigma) G cm 5   % 5   °C 0.1
B         0.3
T 10       0.6
Stability G cm/decade 1   %/decade 5   °C/decade 0.1
B          
T 10       0.25

 

Products   Lake Ice Cover (LIC) Lake Water-Leaving Reflectance     Lake Ice Thickness (LIT)
  (*) Unit Values Values   Unit Values
Horizontal Resolution G m 50 10   m 50
B 100 100   1000
T 1000 1000   10000
Vertical Resolution G   - -     -
B - -   -
T - -   -
Temporal Resolution G d < 1 <1   d 1
B 1 1   30
T 3-7 3-30   365
Timeliness G d 1 1   d 1
B   30   30
T 365 365   365
Required Measurement Uncertainty (2-sigma) G % 1 10   cm 1
B   20   10
T 10 30   15
Stability G %/decade 0.1 0.1   cm 1
B   0.5    
T 1 1   10

 

(*) Goal (G): an ideal requirement above which further improvements are not necessary. Breakthrough (B): an intermediate level between threshold and goal which, if achieved, would result in a significant improvement for the targeted application. The breakthrough value may also indicate the level at which specified uses within climate monitoring become possible. It may be appropriate to have different breakthrough values for different uses. Threshold (T): the minimum requirement to be met to ensure that data are useful.

 


Data Sources

This list provides sources for openly accessible data sets with worldwide coverage for which metadata is available. It is curated by the respective GCOS ECV Steward(s). The list does not claim to be complete. Anyone with a suitable dataset who wishes it to be added to this list should contact the GCOS Secretariat.

  • Database for Hydrological Time Series of Inland Waters (DAHITI) - Technical University Munich (TUM-DGFI)

https://dahiti.dgfi.tum.de

  • ESA Lakes Climate Change Initiative

https://catalogue.ceda.ac.uk/uuid/a07deacaffb8453e93d57ee214676304

  • Hydroweb Theia France

https://hydroweb.theia-land.fr

  • International Data Centre on the Hydrology of Lakes and Reservoirs (HYDROLARE):

http://hydrolare.net/database.php

  • NOAA - Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory

https://www.glerl.noaa.gov/data/

  • World Lake Database of the International Lake Environment Commitee (ILEC)

http://www.ilec.or.jp/en/

  • Satellite ECV Inventory by the CEOS/CGMS Working Group on Climate (WGClimate)

http://climatemonitoring.info/ecvinventory

EU Copernicus

 

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