Using the NOAA Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer to characterise temporal and spatial trends in water temperature of large European lakes

Abstract

(This is a sample cover image for this issue. The actual cover is not yet available at this time.)This article appeared in a journal published by Elsevier. The attached copy is furnished to the author for internal non-commercial research and education use, including for instruction at the authors institution and sharing with colleagues.Other uses, including reproduction and distribution, or selling or licensing copies, or posting to personal, institutional or third party websites are prohibited. Lakes are major repositories of biodiversity, provide multiple ecosystem services and are widely recognised as key indicators of environmental change. However, studies of lake response to drivers of change at a pan-European scale are exceptionally rare. The need for such studies has been given renewed impetus by concerns over environmental change and because of international policies, such as the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD), which impose legal obligations to monitor the condition of European lakes towards sustainable systems with good ecological status. This has highlighted the need for methods that can be widely applied across large spatial and temporal scales and produce comparable results. Remote sensing promises much in terms of information provision, but the spatial transferability and temporal repeatability of methods and relationships observed at individual or regional case studies remains unproven at the continental scale. This study demonstrates that NOAA Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) thermal data are capable of producing highly accurate (R 2 > 0.9) lake surface temperature (LST) estimates in lakes with variable hydromorphological characteristics and contrasting thermal regimes. Validation of the approach using archived AVHRR thermal data for Lake Geneva produced observations that were consistent with field data for equivalent time periods. This approach provides the basis for generalizing temporal and spatial trends in European lake surface temperature over several decades and confirms the potential of the full 30 year NOAA AVHRR archive to can provide AVHRR-derived LST estimates to help inform European policies on lake water quality.

Lake surface water temperatures of European Alpine lakes (1989–2013) based on the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) 1 km data set

“…Various studies (e.g. Oesch et al, 2005;Politi et al, 2012) have shown that LSWT over Europe can be derived with reasonable accuracy making use of global split-window approaches designed for SST retrievals by comparing in situ observations of ocean water temperature with satellite data. These methods, however, are intended to match the global atmospheric conditions over ocean surfaces which may substantially differ from the continental conditions found over some inland water bodies.…”

“…Hulley et al, 2011;MacCallum and Merchant, 2012) have elaborated more accurate methods to retrieve LSWT by utilising radiative transfer codes and atmospheric data from numerical weather prediction (NWP) reanalyses and/or analyses data to better reproduce the atmospheric conditions in such regions and also account for the lake specific altitude. In addition, the latter methods have the advantage of being completely independent of in situ data and therefore are also applicable to situations far away from in situ observations, whereas Politi et al (2012), for instance, use in situ observations to adapt their retrievals for local effects.…”

“…Politi et al, 2012;MacCallum and Merchant, 2012;Schneider and Hook, 2010), but most Table 1. of them cover only large lakes (with a surface area of > 500 km 2 ). Oesch et al (2005) successfully demonstrated that LSWT can also be retrieved for smaller lakes like the majority of the European water bodies in or near the Alps.…”

Performance Assessment of Tailored Split-Window Coefficients for the Retrieval of Lake Surface Water Temperature from AVHRR Satellite Data

“…The red triangles represent the estimated influence of SWCs for different validated LSWT products in literature. (i [11]; ii [29]; iii [37]; iv [12]; v [38]; vi [13]; vii [18]; viii [20]). …”

Developments in Earth observation for the assessment and monitoring of inland, transitional, coastal and shelf-sea waters

“…Burrage et al, 2008;Klemas, 2011), while sea surface temperature can be retrieved from the measurements in the thermal infrared between 8 and 14 µm (e.g. MacCallum and Merchant, 2012;Politi et al, 2012;Merchant et al, 2013). This review is restricted to measurements that can be made by optical remote sensing from satellite platforms and will primarily consider Chl-a, PC, TSM and CDOM.…”