The Need for an Integrated Land‐Lake‐Atmosphere Modeling System, Exemplified by North America's Great Lakes Region

Abstract

In the face of future climate change, it is prudent to seek sustainable adaptation strategies to address regional and local impacts. These impacts are multidimensional, involving interdependencies between systems (weather, urban land use, agriculture, etc.) that are typically modeled independently. To achieve a holistic understanding and thus identify more effective strategies for addressing and/or mitigating impacts, an integrated interdisciplinary research approach is essential. Here we discuss the broader challenges and threats faced by regions encompassing large bodies of water. We illustrate with North America's Great Lakes region, discussing how an integrated model of atmosphere, land, and lake could provide critical information to inform decisions. We stress the need to include input from diverse stakeholders in the development of tools to ensure the quality and usability of impact assessments. Research investments toward such capabilities should engage multiple disciplines including atmospheric sciences, hydrodynamics, hydrology, and biogeochemistry as well as data analytics and modeling. Also, detailed measurement and documentation of urban and agricultural land use, lake surface temperature and ice‐cover, and observations of energy and mass exchanges at the interfaces of atmosphere, land, and water are needed. We envision the development of an integrated set of modeling tools that will improve both the utility of weather forecasts and long‐term climate projections of the impacts on ecosystem sustainability, hydrometeorological extremes, engineering design, human health, and socioeconomic systems. Such a modeling system can serve as a template for other regions with cities, large lakes, inland seas, and coastlines facing similar kinds of climate change impacts.

Implementation and Evaluation of an Improved Lake Scheme in Beijing Climate Center Atmosphere‐Vegetation Interaction Model

“…Lake‐atmosphere interactions have substantial influences on climates from local to regional scales (Sharma et al, 2018). Many studies have been conducted to investigate the importance of lake‐atmosphere interaction in the regional climate models, which are coupled with lake parameterizations (Lofgren, 1997; Steenburgh & Campbell, 2017; Veals & Steenburgh, 2015).…”

Lessons from Inter-Comparison of Decadal Climate Simulations and Observations for the Midwest U.S. and Great Lakes Region

“…In winter, the NARR showed a strong underprediction of precipitation over most of the inner domain, suggesting too much simulated flow of cold, dry arctic air from the north in winter. These effects could be caused by missing Great Lakes effects in the NARR simulations [15]. Furthermore, it is likely that explicit coupling of a hydrodynamic lake model with an atmospheric model such as WRF can improve the model performance significantly in future projections [15].…”

“…The primary reason for the improved capture of lake-effect precipitation was the explicit inclusion of lake surface temperatures as a driver in our model dynamics. As evident, the model outperformed the relatively poor observations in the cold season, as it is difficult to capture the lake-effect processes via observation stations [15]. Both 12-and 4-km simulations captured the seasonal difference in interannual variability ( Figure 5).…”

“…Future climate change projections for the Midwest region suggest increasing temperature and weather extremes, with regional warming up to 10 • C by 2100 [13]. Thus, the changes in temperature and precipitation, as well as future changes in the extremes of the distribution of temperature and precipitation, pose challenges for energy production, ecological conservation, human health, water resource management, and agricultural productivity of this region (IPCC [14,15]).…”

Seasonal and Diurnal Variations in the Priestley–Taylor Coefficient for a Large Ephemeral Lake

“…However, they exert huge impacts on the terrestrial water cycle, energy cycle, and climate system [2][3][4] because of their higher heat capacity and lower albedo compared to the land surface [5,6]. Understanding the evaporative process of inland waters is therefore important for the application of numerical atmospheric models [7][8][9], especially in regions with large lakes [4]. There are 122 large lakes (>1000 km 2 ) across the globe [10], 10 of which are located in China.…”