Lakes
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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. |
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| 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 Water-Leaving Reflectance | ||||
| (*) | Unit | Values | Unit | Values | Values | ||
| Horizontal Resolution | G | m | - | m | 10 | 10 | |
| B | - | 30 | 100 | ||||
| T | 100 | 1000 | 1000 | ||||
| Vertical Resolution | G | - | - | - | |||
| B | - | - | - | ||||
| T | - | - | - | ||||
| Temporal Resolution | G | d | 1 | d | 5 | <1 | |
| B | 30 | 1 | |||||
| T | 365 | 30 | 3-30 | ||||
| Timeliness | G | d | 1 | d | 5 | 1 | |
| B | 30 | 30 | |||||
| T | 365 | 365 | 365 | ||||
| Required Measurement Uncertainty (2-sigma) | G | cm | 5 | % | 5 | 10 | |
| B | 20 | ||||||
| T | 10 | 30 | |||||
| Stability | G | cm/decade | 1 | %/decade | 5 | 0.1 | |
| B | 0.5 | ||||||
| T | 10 | 1 | |||||
| Products | Lake Surface Water Temperature (LSWT) | Lake Ice Cover (LIC) | Lake Ice Thickness (LIT) | ||||||
| (*) | Unit | Values | Unit | Values | Unit | Values | |||
| Horizontal Resolution | G | km | 0.1 | m | 50 | m | 50 | ||
| B | 1 | 100 | 1000 | ||||||
| T | 2 | 1000 | 10000 | ||||||
| Vertical Resolution | G | - | - | - | |||||
| B | - | - | - | ||||||
| T | - | - | - | ||||||
| Temporal Resolution | G | h | 3 | d | < 1 | d | 1 | ||
| B | 24 | 1 | 30 | ||||||
| T | 240 | 3-7 | 365 | ||||||
| Timeliness | G | d | 1 | d | 1 | d | 1 | ||
| B | 30 | 30 | |||||||
| T | 365 | 365 | 365 | ||||||
| Required Measurement Uncertainty (2-sigma) | G | °C | 0.1 | % | 1 | cm | 1 | ||
| B | 0.3 | 10 | |||||||
| T | 0.6 | 10 | 15 | ||||||
| Stability | G | °C/decade | 0.1 | % | 0.1 | cm | 1 | ||
| B | |||||||||
| T | 0.25 | 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)
- International Data Centre on the Hydrology of Lakes and Reservoirs (HYDROLARE):
- World Lake Database of the International Lake Environment Commitee (ILEC)
- Satellite ECV Inventory by the CEOS/CGMS Working Group on Climate (WGClimate)
