Deeper waters are changing less consistently than surface waters in a global analysis of 102 lakes

Date

2020-11-25

Authors

Pilla, Rachel M.
Williamson, Craig E.
Adamovich, Boris V.
Adrian, Rita
Anneville, Orlane
Chandra, Sudeep
Colom‑Montero, William
Devlin, Shawn P.
Dix, Margaret A.
Dokulil, Martin T.

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

Nature Research

Abstract

Globally, lake surface water temperatures have warmed rapidly relative to air temperatures, but changes in deepwater temperatures and vertical thermal structure are still largely unknown. We have compiled the most comprehensive data set to date of long-term (1970–2009) summertime vertical temperature profiles in lakes across the world to examine trends and drivers of whole-lake vertical thermal structure. We found significant increases in surface water temperatures across lakes at an average rate of + 0.37 °C decade−1, comparable to changes reported previously for other lakes, and similarly consistent trends of increasing water column stability (+ 0.08 kg m−3 decade−1). In contrast, however, deepwater temperature trends showed little change on average (+ 0.06 °C decade−1), but had high variability across lakes, with trends in individual lakes ranging from − 0.68 °C decade−1 to + 0.65 °C decade−1. The variability in deepwater temperature trends was not explained by trends in either surface water temperatures or thermal stability within lakes, and only 8.4% was explained by lake thermal region or local lake characteristics in a random forest analysis. These findings suggest that external drivers beyond our tested lake characteristics are important in explaining long-term trends in thermal structure, such as local to regional climate patterns or additional external anthropogenic influences.

Description

© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Nature Research. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons. org/licenses/by/4.0/.

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Citation

Pilla, R.M., Williamson, C.E., Adamovich, B.V. et al. Deeper waters are changing less consistently than surface waters in a global analysis of 102 lakes. Sci Rep 10, 20514 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-76873-x

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